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EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY; 



THE SCIENCE OF MIND FROM EXPERIENCE. 

LAURENS P. HICKOK, D.D., LL.D. 
REVISED 

WITH THE CO-OPERATION OF 

JULIUS H. SEELYE, D.D., LL.D., 

PRESIDENT OF AMHERST COLLEGE. 






BOSTON: 

PUBLISHED BY GINN, HEATH, & CO. 

1882. 



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Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1882, by 

LAUREx\S_ P. HICKOK 

and 

JULIUS H. SEELYE, 

in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



GiNN, Heath, & Co.: 

J. S. Gushing, Printer, 16 Hawley Street, 

Boston. 



PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. " 



IT is the design, in the present work, to represent the 
human mind as it stands in the clear Hght of consciousness. 
We go to our own inward experience to find the facts, both 
of the single mental phenomena and of their connection with 
each other. An Empirical Psychology is here alone attempted, 
and in this we cannot proceed according to the order of a 
pure science. The necessary and universal Ideas, which must 
determine all mental activity in every capacity, in order that 
these capacities may become intelligible to us in their con- 
ditional laws of operation, are not now first assumed, and then 
carried forward to a completed system by a rigid a priori 
analysis and speculation in pure thought. Such a work has 
already been accomplished in a Psychology thoroughly rational. 
The subjective Idea which must condition and expound all 
Intelligence has been attained, and then the objective Law 
which controls all the facts of an acting Intelligence has been 
determined to be in exact accordance. But in this work we 
wait upon experience altogether. We use no fact, and no 
combination of facts, except as they have already been attained 
in the consciousness of humanity. It is rather a description 
of the human mind than a philosophy of it ; a psycography 
rather than a psychology; and should not assume for itself 
the prerogatives of an exact science. 

3 



IV PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 

Still, with this renunciation of all claim to a pure science, 
the attempt has been made to find the human mind as it is, 
and all its leading facts as they combine to make a complete 
whole. The aim has been to present all the constituent parts 
in the light of their reciprocal adaptations to each other, and 
to show how all depend upon each one, and that each one 
exists for all, and thus to give the mind through all its faculties 
as a living unity, complete and consistent in its own organized 
identity. When a system is thus matured from conscious 
experience, having all the symmetry and unity of the acting 
reality, it may be known in a qualified sense, as a philosophy, 
and be termed a science of mind. It is a science, as Chem- 
istry, Geology, and Botany are sciences, the study of facts in 
their combinations as nature gives them to us, and thus teach- 
ing what is first learned by careful observation and experiment. 
It assumes not to have found those conditioning principles 
which determine that the facts must have been so ; but it may 
and does from its own consciousness affirm that the facts 
are so. 

Such a method of studying the human mind should precede 
that which is more purely philosophical, and thus more truly 
metaphysical, and is, perhaps, the only method to be attempted 
in an Academic or a Collegiate course. It is universally 
essential, as a portion of that applied discipline which is to 
prepare for vigorous and independent action in all public 
stations, and cannot be dispensed with in any learned pro- 
fession without detracting from both the utility and the dignity 
of the man. It equally applies to the full process of Female 
Education, and both adorns and refines while it also expands 



PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. V 

and strengthens. This empirical exercise, thus indispensable 
for every scholar, is also a preparative and incentive to the 
study of the higher Metaphysics in more advanced stages of 
philosophical enquiry. 

The present work has been written with the eye constantly 
on the class for whose study it is designed, and indeed mainly 
while the daily instruction with the author's class was in progress, 
and the care has been to make it intelligible to any student 
of considerable maturity, who will resolutely and faithfully 
bring its statements to the test of his own clear consciousness. 
No instruction in Empirical Psychology can be given by mere 
verbal statement and definition, nor by attempted analogy 
and illustration. If the Teacher does not send the pupil to 
the fact as he has it in his own experience, there will be 
either an inadequate or an erroneous conception attained. 
The phenomenon within is unlike any phenomenon without, 
and all ingenious speculation and logical deduction will be 
empty and worthless without close and direct introspection. 
With such habits of investigation, it is fully believed that the 
following delineation of mental faculties and their operations 
will be readily apprehended, and consciously recognized as 
mainly conformed to the person's own inward experience. 



PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION. 



IN the present edition, the original work has been wholly 
revised and almost wholly rewritten. Longer period of 
instruction and broader investigation has made the way and 
the work more famiUar than at first, so that, with the like end 
in view, we come back to our former starting-point, and find 
the entire vista more clearly open, and a favorable occasion 
thereby given for variation, enlargement, and correction, as 
may respectively be found requisite in this revision. It 
has been a special design to make this edition a ready and 
helpful introduction to a spiritual philosophy by which univer- 
sal human experience shall become a complete systematic 
science. JMf 

The old copy took common consciousness as ultimate crite- 
rion for science, and assumed it to be alike in like conditions 
always for the same man, and also conditionally alike always 
for all men. But if we will more acutely and accurately try 
like facts by assisted scientific experiment, we may get prac- 
tical proof for the uniformity of consciousness in all uniform 
cases. Such scientific experiment is made the test in this 
copy, and this is carried upwards through all the revealings 
of consciousness in higher faculties ; yet, since common expe- 
rience is given in common consciousness, and the scientific 
proofs are not sought till we take up General Empirical 

7 



Vlll PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION. 

Science, there has been occasion for only slight alterations 
in the Introduction, or in the Anthropology which leads to 
the attainment of common experience. 

A text-book needs to be both comprehensive and compact, 
and at the same time clear ; and this book has been prepared 
with a full sense of these requirements. It is hoped that a 
complete outline of the science will be here found concisely 
presented, and in precise and plain terms. The realm of 
thought, however, cannot be explored without thought ; and .a 
text-book of mental science which should furnish no difficulties 
to any student would probably be as superficial and partial as it 
might be simple and plain. 

The controlling interest in the present work has been all 
along to secure for the student, in this First Book of Psychology, 
such a start on his philosophical course as will effectually keep 
him from finding his pursuit of truth on the one side fruitless, 
because he has taken the path which leads to the insuperable 
deadlock of balanced mechanical forces, and on the other side 
endless and bootless, because his way opens into the desert 
of empty abstractions or toward the mirage of fleeting and 
only imaginary idealities. The hope is cherished that he will 
find here an open path soliciting his pleasant perseverance 
and assuredly leading to the completion of science in the 
systematic comprehension of universal human experience. 

Amherst, Mass., December, 1881. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE, 

INTRODUCTION. The Difficulties and Tendencies to Error 

IN the Study of Mind 15 

ANTHROPOLOGY 23 

1. Difference of sex 25 

2. Difference of race 28 

3. Difference of temperament 34 

4. Differences from bodily weakness 38 

5. Interactions of body and mind 41 



EMPIRICAL SCIENCE 44 

Section I. General Method in Empirical Science ... 44 
Section IL General Facts for Empirical Psychology . . 47 



EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY 



53 



Section I. Its Meaning 53 

Section II. Primitive Facts 56 

Section III. Specific Method • . . . 61 

FIRST DIVISION: THE INTELLECT 63 

CHAPTER I. The Sense 65 

Section I. Objective Constructions 66 

Section IL Subjective Constructions 72 

CHAPTER IL The Understanding 75 

Section L Its Meaning and Cognitions 75 

Section IL Outlines of Empirical Logic ....... 82 

Section III. Imagination m 

9 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 

CHAPTER III. The Reason 115 

Section I. Recognition of Reason 117 

Section II. Recognition of a Reason beyond that which 

is Human 124 

Section III. The Beautiful, the True, and the Good . . 128 

Section IV. Genius 130 

SECOND DIVISION: THE SUSCEPTIBILITY 133 

CHAPTER I. The Sentient Susceptibility 139 

Section I. The Instincts 141 

Section II. Affections in the Organism 143 

Section III. The Appetites 143 

Section IV. Natural Affections ■ . 145 

Section V. Self-interested Feelings 147 

Section VI. Disinterested Feelings 152 

CHAPTER II. The Psychical Susceptibility 152 

Section I. Pleasures and Pains of Memory 152 

Section II. Interest in Scientific Classification 154 

Section III. Interest in Theoretic Investigation .... 155 
Section IV. Interest in the Logic of Permanent Concep- 
tions 157 

Section V. Interest in the Logic of Changing Conceptions. 158 

Section VL Interest in the Logic of Living Spontaneities. 161 

CHAPTER III. The Rational Susceptibility 162 

Section L Esthetic Emotions 162 

Section II. Philosophic Emotions 164 

Section III. Ethical Emotions 167 

Section IV. Theistic Emotions 169 

THIRD DIVISION: THE WILL 173 

CHAPTER I. Modifications of Executive Energy ... 174 

Section I. The Executive Energy in the Sense .... 174 

Section II. The Executive Energy in the Soul .... 176 

Section HI. The Executive Energy in the Spirit .... 179 



CONTENTS. XI 

PAGE. 

CHAPTER II. Scientific Proof of Will in Liberty . . i86 

Section I. Man Exercises such Capacity ....... i86 

Section II. Discriminations of Will in Liberty .... 199 

Section III. Objections to Will in Liberty 202 

CHAPTER III. Classified Grades of Will 208 

Section I. Immanent Preference 208 

Section II. Governing Purpose 210 

Section III. Radical Disposition 215 

Section IV. The Completed Will in Liberty completes 

Empirical Psychology ^^ 226 

FOURTH DIVISION: A UNIVERSAL PHILOSOPHY ... 234 

Section I. Proper Province of Philosophy 234 

Section II. Insufficient Theories 236 

1. The Aristotelian 237 

2. The Hegelian 240 

3. The Kantian 253 

4. Natural Evolution , 257 

Section III. Attitude of Science at the opening of Phi- 
losophy 270 

Section IV. Indices towards a Complete Philosophy . . 274 



INTRODUCTION, 



PSYCHOLOGY comprehends the necessary principles and 
the developed facts of mind. Rational Psychology finds 
its field in the necessary principles of mind, while the developed 
facts form the exclusive object of Empirical Psychology. This, 
which alone we now investigate, is the science of mind as re- 
vealed in the actual facts of a conscious experience. 

It thus includes all mental facts which may come within the 
human experience, and demands, as an empirical science, that 
all these facts be collected and orderly arranged. 

Such a science has not yet reached its consummation. All 
the facts of mind are not probably yet found, while many that 
have been attained are neither clearly discriminated nor properly 
systematized. The labor still to be expended on this field, be- 
fore it can be said to be fully in possession,' is very great, and 
is greatly increased by certain liabilities to error always found 
in the study of mental phenomena. We shall best facihtate our 
entrance upon our investigations by noting some of these, and 
the way to overcome them. 

I. The invei'ted method of the mind'^s operation in attaining 
its facts. 

The objects of Empirical Psychology are the facts of mind 
which come within every man's own experience. We may not 
assume what the facts are from any presumption of what they 
should be, nor take them upon trust because others have said 
what and how they are ; we must find them within ourselves. 



lO INTRODUCTION. 

and clearly apprehend them in our own experience, or they are 
incapable of use in our psychology. The facts, indeed, must 
be those which are found in others as well as in ourselves, but 
while others may have observed and used the same, they have 
no validity to us except through our own conscious experience 
of them. Our first need, therefore, in the study of Psychology, 
is a familiarity with the facts of our own consciousness. 

But this is not easily gained. From its first conscious appre- 
hension the mind has been busy with the phenomena of nature 
and the objects of an external world. It has become so en- 
grossed with these that, while the attainment of new facts 
through sensible observation is easy and pleasant, it is both 
difficult and disagreeable for the mind to break up its old habit 
of looking outward while it turns its attention towards its own 
action, and makes its own phenomena its study. The effort 
steadily to look in this unaccustomed direction induces a weari- 
ness that destroys the capacity for clear perception and patient 
investigation. Repeated attempts and decided and perpetu- 
ated effort, which shall ultimately habituate the mind to giye 
this intro-version to its attention, can alone secure any deep 
interest and delight in this order of mental operation. A fixed 
and prolonged examination of the phenomena of the inner 
mental world is, on this account, the agreeable and chosen em- 
ployment of comparatively few minds, — probably less than one 
in a thousand in our more enlightened communities. 

The perpetual tendency from this is to induce impatience and 
haste in the induction of mental facts, and to leave the whole 
philosophy of mind to a superficial examination. The assertions 
of one, hastily made, are taken upon trust by others ; specious 
appearances are carelessly assumed to be veritable realities ; 
complex operations are left unanalyzed, and erroneous conclu- 
sions drawn from partial inductions ; and then the whole is put 
together through the connections of mere casual or fancied 
lesemblances ; often even mingling contradictions and absurdi- 



INTRODUCTION. \J 

ties in the system. Many doctrines both false and pernicious 
are propounded, and gain currency, respecting the mind, solely 
because the mind is unaccustomed to accurately note the daily 
experiences in its own consciousness. 

This difficulty is to be overcome, and the liability to error there- 
by avoided, only by a resolute perseverance in overcoming the 
old habit, and learning the method of readily reading the lessons 
from our own inward experience. And there is no way to do 
this but by doing it. The organs of sense must be shut up, and 
the material world shut out, and the mind for the time shut in 
upon itself, and made to become familiar with its own action. 
The man must learn to commune with himself; to study him- 
self; to know himself; to live amid the phenomena of his own 
spiritual being ; and when this habit of intro-spection has been 
gained, the investigation of mental facts becomes not only pos- 
sible, but facile and delightful. 

2. The ambiguity of language. 

Language is the outer body of thought. Words, without 
thought, are empty ; and thought, without words, is helpless. 
The common speech is thus the outer expression of the com- 
mon thoughts of mankind. Philosophy attains the necessary 
principles, and determines the rules for the grammatical con- 
struction of language ; but philosophy does not make nor 
change language. The working of the human mind within 
determines for itself its own outer expression, and, as an inner 
spirit and life, builds up its own body, and gives to it a form 
according to the inherent law of its own activity. 

The great mass of mankind 'are conversant mainly with the 
objects of the sensible world. They think, and thus speak, 
of Httle else than those phenomena which meet them face to 
face through the organs of sense. The words they employ to 
denote these phenomena have little ambiguity, because their 
meaning can be so easily verified by a sensible repetition of 
that which they denote. When men begin to reflect and 



1 8 INTRODUCTION. 

philosophize concerning nature, their technical phraseology 
is readily referred, for its interpretation, to the outer objects 
of which] it is the symbol, and thus there need be here little 
mistake or confusion in apprehending the thought. In mathe- 
matics, also, where the conceptions are numbers and diagrams, 
which can be constructed alike by all, language has a definite 
meaning which precludes any possible ambiguity or obscurity. 

But, in mental science, the case is quite different. The 
thought must have its word, and the science its philosophical 
phraseology ; but the thoughts, as elements of mental science, 
are quite peculiar. They relate to thought itself, and the inner 
faculties and functions of a spiritual existence. The words 
which express them cannot be explained by any reference to 
sensible objects, and yet the words wherewith we denote sen- 
sible phenomena are all we have wherewith to denote these 
inner phenomena of our mental being and action. To invent 
new terms for these new thoughts would be impossible, since 
such terms would neither have any significance to another 
mind, nor any reahty to our own. We are obliged to accom- 
modate to these inner spiritual phenomena the language already 
appropriated to sensible objects ; and while the mind may do 
this quite spontaneously, as though discerning some original 
correspondence in these two kinds of facts, yet the process is 
always liable to more or less uncertainty and ambiguity. While 
it may not be accidental that the mind, though wholly spiritual, 
unextended, and illimitable by any of the forms of space, is said 
to hQ fixed or to wander, to be dull or acute, narrow or compi-e- 
hensive, or that the names for tangible qualities in nature are 
also transferred to the intangible characteristics of the spirit, yet 
these primary and secondary significations of words, whereby in 
the science of mind we are perpetually thrown back upon the 
analogies of matter, induce mistakes and confusion, and often a 
wide misapprehension of the thought, in the illusion from the 
two-faced symbol that conveys it. Sturdy controversies have 



INTRODUCTION. IQ 

been often mere logomachies, and it may be doubted whether 
men would ever dispute upon any point in psychology if they 
perfectly understood one another. 

The errors from this source are to be avoided, not by exclud- 
ing all such ambiguities, w^hich will be wholly impracticable, 
but by universally bringing the fact, through actual experiment, 
within the light of conciousness. By whatever symbol the 
mental fact may be communicated, the conception must be 
known as that of some phenomenon within us, and not some 
quality from the world without us. The analogy must not be 
permitted to delude, but the fact itself must be found amid the 
conscious elements of our own mental experience. The truths 
we want in psychology are not to be sought in the heavens 
above, nor in the depth beneath ; but they are nigh us, even 
in our own being, and amid the hourly revealings of our own 
consciousness. 

3. Inadequate conceptions of mental being and development. 

The complete conception of a plant includes far more than 
its sensible phenomena of color, shape, size, and motion; or 
that of all its separate parts of stock, branches, and leaves. 
It must especially include its vital force as an inner agency 
which develops itself in a progressive and orderly growth to 
maturity. This is widely different from all conceptions of 
mechanical combinations, in which the structure is put together 
from the outside, according to some preconceived plan of 
arrangement. There is, both in the plant and the machine, 
the conception of some law of combination, and in this a 
rational idea which expounds each its own structure ; but in 
the plant it is that of an inner living law, spontaneously working 
out its organic development, while in the mechanism it is an 
artificial process for putting dead matter together. The former 
conception is far more difficult adequately to attain than the 
latter. 

The conception of animal life and development is still more 



20 INTRODUCTION. 

difficult since it rises quite above that of the vegetable, and 
includes the superadded forces of a sentient nature with its 
appetite craving, its instinctive selection of food, and its faculty 
of locomotion. But incalculably more complex and difficult is 
the conception of the human life. In this are found not only 
the forces of the plant and the animal, but the distinctive and 
far more elevated endowment of rational faculty, whereby the 
human hfe is lifted into the sphere of personality and endowed 
with the prerogative of action in liberty and moral responsi- 
bility. All this complexity of superinduced faculties from mere 
vital force up to rational being, has in man its complete organic 
unity, constituting but one existence in its own identity, and its 
own inner spirit works out a complete development of the 
whole, through all the manifestations of gi-owth and mature 
activity. One life pervades the whole, and one law of being 
makes every part reciprocally subservient and accordant with 
all other parts. 

Inadequate conceptions of humanity, which leave out any 
of its included capacities and exalted prerogatives, must nec- 
essarily originate very faulty systems of psychology. All resting 
in the analogies of mere mechanical combinations and move- 
ments must be widely erroneous ; and any failure clearly to 
discriminate between the animal and the rational must neces- 
sarily fail in the attainment of a spiritual philosophy ; and any 
complete conceptions of man's spirituality, which do not at the 
same time recognize the modification therein given from its com- 
bination with the material and the animal, will also necessarily 
render the person incompetent to study and attain the science 
of mind as it dwells in a tabernacle of flesh and blood. An 
exclusion, in fact, of any one of the superinduced powers and 
faculties in humanity, and their reciprocal dependencies and 
modifications, must so far vitiate the system of philosophy 
which is thus attempted to be constructed. Liabilities to error 
here are greater than from all other sources. 



INTRODUCTION. 21 

• The only way to obviate these difficulties, and escape these 
liabilities to error, is by cultivating the intellect till we can see 
without mistake the essentially spiritual being of -the subject to 
be investigated. The use of any mechanical analogies or ani- 
mal resemblances must not be allowed to delude the mind with 
the notion that the rational and spiritual part of humanity can 
be at all adequately apprehended through any such media. 

The mind must be studied in the light of its own conscious 
operations, and the perpetual interactions of the sense and the 
spirit, "the law in the members " and " the law of the mind " 
must be accurately observed ; and while the philosophy thus 
knows how to distinguish things that differ, it must also know 
how to estimate the modifications which these different things 
make reciprocally upon each other. All material and animal 
being has a law imposed upon it, while all spiritual being has 
its law written within it ; the first moves wholly within the chain 
of necessity, the last has its action in liberty and under inalien- 
able responsibility ; and all philosophy is falsely so called, 
which does not adequately discriminate between them. 

4. The broad comprehension necessaiy to an accicrafe classi- 
fication of mental facts. 

The mind is a unit in its existence, through all its varied 
states of activity and all its successive stages of development. 
It is moreover a hving unity, growing to maturity and maintain- 
ing the integrity of its organization, by the perpetuated energy 
of one and the same vital principle. When, then, we have 
attained all the single facts of mind which can be given in any 
experience, and know how to analyze every fact to its simple 
elements, we have not yet completed our mental philosophy. 
The philosophy truly consists in the combination of all these 
discriminated facts into one complete system. But there are 
very many ways in which a classification of the facts found may 
be made, and thus systems from the same facts may be as vari- 
ous as their varied combinations may admit. Merely casual 



22 INTRODUCTION. 

relationships may be taken, or even fancied or arbitrary con- 
nections assumed, and made the principle by which the facts 
are brought into system ; or a blind imitation of another man's 
system may be followed, with no independent examination and 
determination of what the true order of classification may be. 

The liabilities to such faulty classifications find their source 
in the difficulty of attaining comprehensively what is the living 
order of arrangement, as found in the mind itself. Single facts 
can much easier be found, than the right place for them in com- 
bination with all others. To put each fact in its own place 
demands a knowledge of its relationship to all others, and thus 
no classification of it can be known as correct, except through 
a knowledge of all others with which it must stand in connec- 
tion. The entire facts in the system must thus be known, each 
in its own control over others or dependency upon others, be- 
fore they can be put together in any valid order of systematic 
arrangement. Such a comprehensive view is not readily attained. 
Few minds are willing to take the labor necessary to reacli such 
a standpoint, where they may overlook the whole field and 
accurately note every division and subdivision within it. The 
several faculties and functions of mind are facts, as really as the 
phenomena which come out in their particular exercises ; and 
the whole mind, with all these faculties, is itself a fact, to be 
accurately known in its completeness as really as any one 
faculty, or any one act of any faculty. Only by such comj^-e- 
hensive knowledge can the liability to faulty systems in mental 
science be excluded. 

Thus forewarned of the difficulties in the prosecution of the 
study of mind, and the liabilities to error thereby induced, the 
student is better prepared to enter upon the necessary investi- 
gations, and to guard against any delusive influences that may 
assail him. His task is to attain the facts of mind and classify 
them, exactly as they are found to be in the clear light of con- 
scious experience. 



ANTHROPOLOGY. 



IN our study we may not anticipate speculative principles 
which may only appear as the result of our study. We start 
with facts which lie upon the surface, which every eye sees, and 
which all admit. 

At first view, man seems to every observer quite different from 
ail the objects around him. The common mind which has rec- 
ognized the distinction between, mute matter and living bodies, 
and between vegetable and animal life, sees also the capital dis- 
tinction between the higher orders of animals and man. The 
difference between the animal and the man is to the common 
mind clear and broad, notwithstanding the likeness of the two. 
The common mind finds, in both, sensation and locomotion and 
many similarities' in structure and function; but man's erect 
posture, expressive countenance, organs of speech, and skilful 
hand, his control of circumstances, and capabiHty to fit himself 
for his habitation in all climates, and, more than all, the mani- 
festation of a personahty which claims rights and admits obliga- 
tions, give him a superiority and dominion over all other animals, 
and make the everywhere-acknowledged distinction between the 
human being and the brute. Whether this distinction shall grow 
larger or less as farther study of man and brute, in comparative 
psychology, progresses, matters not here. We are simply look- 
ing now at what appears to the common mind, and only need 
to notice at this point, that in common admission man stands 
out separate and alone amid all earthly things. The common 



24 ANTHROPOLOGY. 

mind can thus take humanity entire and distinct from all else 
this world contains, and make its intrinsic distinctions the 
object of its farther study. Such a study would come under 
the technical term of Anthropology. 

And yet, as the common mind pursues it, notwithstanding its 
assumed name, this is not a science, since it applies no accurate 
and repe*ated experiments in its investigations. It is only the 
note which mankind in common takes of the dawning distinc- 
tions earliest recurring among themselves, and which, however 
vaguely, are looked upon as integrant portions held together in 
the common humanity. The study of the parts may be in any 
generation, or in their historic transmissions through many gen- 
erations, but the same humanity will be recognized in all and its 
acknowledged characteristic traits will still hold all its distinctive 
members in one family. 

But although Anthropology, in the sense thus given it, is a 
study, and not a science, it is preliminary to science, and that 
out of which all science and philosophy must originate, for it 
attains for us a common experience from which only can any 
scientific or philosophic passages outward be ever successfully 
attempted. The common experience is the common source 
from whence all intelligence, speculative or conclusive, inductive 
or deductive, can be derived. 

We give only sufficient outhnes of anthropologic study for the 
legitimate attainment of this common experience. 

We may fairly take for our starting point, since this is cer- 
tainly held by the common mind, that the human race is one, 
and that there is a common experience of humanity. We 
need not now make any inquiries into the origin of this. All 
questions concerning "the origin of species" and "the descent 
of man" will here be wholly irrelevant and impertinent, for 
they can neitlier be asked nor answered till we come to quite 
an advanced stage of scientific and speculative investigation. 
Whether man may have been evolved from some animal, or has 



ANTHROPOLOGY. 2$ 

had separate creations at different times and in divers places, or 
has had one common ancestry as the product of one creator, 
the common mind will derive its conviction of a common expe- 
rience from the fact that the distinctive traits of humanity above 
noted characterize the acknowledged human being of every age 
and clime. Wherever these distinctive marks be observed in 
any generation, or are historically transmitted through many 
generations, or sculptured on old monuments, or painted on 
the walls of uncovered ancient tombs, the common mind at 
once. sympathizes with such beings and their works as belonging 
with it to the same family, and thus held together with it in a 
kindred community. The inquiry, Whence came man? is for 
the scientific and speculative mind; the common mind ac- 
knowledges its community with the characteristics of humanity 
wherever found, much earlier than its scientific curiosity is there- 
by stimulated to the search for its origin. It assumes the com- 
munity at once, and in this the acknowledged relationship of 
every human individual with every other. 

But while with these generally distinctive traits of humanity, 
lifting it above mere animality, we have also the peculiarities of 
a human organism, bodily and mental, which may perpetuate 
their general uniformity from age to age, there are certain in- 
trinsic differences in the human family, which, however induced, 
are the proper objects of anthropological study, and which, while 
they will reveal somewhat large internal distinctions of experi- 
ence, will also manifest that these distinctions are quite compat- 
ible with a common experience, in which individual members of 
a generic community, however different, alike participate. 

I. Difference of sex. This is the broadest difference in 
human life, and manifests its influence through all the anatomical 
structure and physiological functions of the human organism. 
The bones, muscles, skin, hair, and the venous and nervous sys- 
tems are all modified by the constitutional peculiarities of the 
particular sex. A man's bones and muscles are larger, stronger, 



26 ANTHROPOLOGY. 

and more angular than a woman's. The nervous system of a 
man shows the larger cerebral and that of the woman the larger 
ganglionic development. The relative size of the brain in the 
two sexes is nearly expressed by the ratio of fifty-four to forty- 
five. The man has the larger lungs and the woman the larger 
liver. The man's blood is richer in solid contents and circulates 
more slowly than that of the woman, a woman's pulse having 
from ten to fourteen beats a minute more than a man's. These 
differences do not always appear in individual cases, but are 
sufficiently manifest to warrant their affirmation as a general law. 

But these bodily differences are no more strongly marked 
than are the mental. There is a radical and abiding difference 
between a male and female intellect. The woman is more intui- 
tive than the man, while the man is more logical than the 
woman. The opinion of a good woman, even though it be one 
for which she is able to give no good reason, will be trusted by 
a wise man. A woman is more apt to excel in mathematics 
than in logic, and in law than in theology. The keen-sighted 
Greeks made the fountain of law, — Themis, — and also the 
ministers of law, — Dike, Nemesis, Adrastea, the Erinnyes, — 
females. It accords with this thought, and can hardly be 
called accidental, that female sovereigns are prominent among 
the most conspicuous rulers of states. A man's sovereignty, 
however, is more likely to be exercised according to the 
demands of his understanding, and a woman's according to the 
requirements of her heart. 

In respect of feeling, a woman is more sensitive, she feels 
more keenly and more intensely than a man. She is the more 
warm-hearted while he is the more open-hearted ; the woman 
can keep her secrets better than a man, though she may be 
freer with those of another. Constitutionally apportioned to 
bear in her body the race, she is thereby more apprehensive of 
danger, is less courageous, but at the same time is more chaste, 
more patient, more tender, and more loving than the m^n. 



ANTHROPOLOGY. 2/ 

Though more intense in her animosities and less easily placated 
than a man, a woman is not a warrior even among savage 
nations, except where, as among the Dahomans, females who 
fight in armies do not marry, but are said to have changed their 
sex. Both sexes are susceptible of jealousy, but the man is only 
jealous where he is loved, and the woman only where she is not 
loved. The sentiment of duty is stronger in him and the senti- 
ment of honor in her. The man yields to a control to which 
his understanding assents, while the woman claims a control 
which her feelings assert. Both sexes desire marriage ; but the 
woman finds her independence in the married state, and the 
man loses his. 

While, with these differences between the two sexes it is quite 
absurd to speak of any general superiority of the one over the 
other, since the idea of humanity contains the two, and each is 
the necessary complement of the other, we must take cognizance 
of the fact that there is a radical and abiding difference between 
the two sexes, — a difference which advancing culture, instead 
of removing, only renders more apparent. A savage man and 
•woman are much more alike than are the two sexes when civi- 
lized. In the photographs of wild North American Indians 
it is difficult to distinguish a woman's face from a man's. Even 
the voices of the sexes are very similar among savages, differing 
in most cases only as tenor and alto, — the man's voice deepening 
to a bass and the woman's rising to a soprano, only, as a rule, in 
civilized life. Thus the sexual differences which barbarism 
obliterates civilization restores and renders increasingly promi- 
nent ; and if in any case this fails to be true, we meet the case 
with aversion. A masculine woman and an effeminate man are 
both encountered with disgust. 

But though this difference is broad and clear, and is easily 
recognised by the common mind, it is not prejudicial to the 
essential unity of the two sexes. The sexes are both human, 
and it is one common experience, in which both combine, not- 
withstanding the modifications given it by each. 



ZS ANTHROPOLOGY. 

2. Differe7ices of 7'ace. These differences are very apparent, 
but there has been little uniformity in their classification. If 
there be considered three races, whose type and characteristics 
differ exclusively of each other, and all other varieties be con- 
sidered as a blending of these, and their peculiarities as sub- 
typical only, and not indicative of distinct race, the most 
satisfactory account may be rendered. We shall then have 
the Caucasian, the Mongolian, and the Nigritian races, as dis- 
tinctively marked types in our common humanity. There are, 
in the geography of Asia, two elevated plateaus, stretching 
from west to east quite across the continent. The western 
commences in Turkey, and has the Caucasus on the north, and 
the Tauras and Kurdistan on the south, and passes on through 
Persia to the Indus, having the table-lands of Iran as its eastern 
extremity, and declining to the plains of the Tigris and Euphrates 
on the south, and of the Caspian and Bactriana, wdth the rivers 
of Sihon and Gihon on the north. Then commences a far more 
elevated table-land, having the Himmalaya on the south, and 
the Celestial and Altai mountains on the north, and stretching 
eastward to the sea of Ochotsk on the Pacific, descending to the 
great peninsular plains of the Hindustan, farther India, and 
China on the south, and the frozen plains of Siberia on the 
north. This eastern Asiatic elevation contains Mongolia and 
Chinese Tartary. If we call the first the Caucasian, and the 
second the Mongolian table-land, we shall have the cradles 
of the three races of mankind, and the names for two of the 
most distinguished and the most numerous. 

The Caucasian race is that of the most perfect type of 
humanity, and may be said to have its centre and most dis- 
tinguished marks in Georgia and Circassia, and to be modified 
by distance and other circumstances in departing from this 
geographical centre. The peculiarity of the Caucasian type 
is that of general symmetry and regularity of outline. The head 
oval ; the lines of the eyes and the mouth dividing the whole 



ANTHROPOLOGY. 29 

face into three nearly equal parts ; the eyes large and their axes 
at right angles with the line of the nose, and the facial angle 
about ninety degrees, with a full beard covering quite to the 
ears. The complexion is white, and the stature tall, straight, 
and well proportioned. The Caucasian race can be followed 
through various migrations from the original home, as peopling 
southern and western Asia, northern Africa, and almost the 
whole of Europe. In southern and western Asia, we have the 
Hindus, the Semitic families of the Hebrews, Assyrians, and 
Arabians ; in Egypt and Mauritania, the Mitzraim stock ; and 
in Europe, the old Pelasgic tribes of the Mediterranean, with 
the successive Scythian irruptions ; the old Celtic, Teutonic, 
and Gothic branches of central Europe, and the Scandinavian 
and Sclavic tribes of the north of Europe. 

The Mongolian race differs widely from the Caucasian, and 
is quite inferior. Their home is in a more cold, hard, and 
inhospitable region. The highest mountains in the world envi- 
ron and run through this immense plateau of western Asia, 
covered at their tops with perpetual snow, and, especially at the 
south, fencing off all the warm and moist gales of the Indian 
Ocean, and with only few and distant openings for any commu- 
nication with the vales below on either side. The primitive 
type of the Mongolian is a triangular or pyramidal form of the 
head, with prominent cheek bones ; the eyes cramped, and 
standing far apart, with the outer corners greatly elevated ; the 
facial angle eighty degrees ; the nose small ; the hair coarse, 
black, and hanging lankly down ; with scanty beard, which 
never covers the face 'so high as the ears ; and a bronze or 
olive complexion. The expansions of this race have passed 
down to the south and the north ; and have extended west- 
ward in the old Turcomans, the Magyar or Hungarian people, 
and the ancient Finns and Lapps in the north-west corner 
of Europe ; and to the north-east of Asia in the Yacontis, 
the Tschoudi, and the Kamtschatkadales. The Tartars once 



30 ANTHROPOLOGY. 

overran and subjugated the Sclavic tribes in European Russia, 
but a combined resistance drove them to return to their own 
family in Asia. 

The Nigritian race, which in Central Africa becomes the full- 
typed Negro, has a less distinctly marked central origin. Cir- 
cumstances, however, determine the region which must have 
been the cradle of this race. At quite the eastern portion of 
the Caucasian table-land, or perhaps in the valley of the Indus 
and at the foot of the Himmalayas must have been their origin. 
There are now black people in this region, and of a wholly 
different type from the Caucasian or Mongohan. But the 
branching off of the propagations from this stock, from this 
point, is the surest evidence. The characteristic marks of the 
Nigritian are a dull sallow skin, varying in all shades to a sooty 
and up to a shining black, with a crisp woolly hair, and nearly 
beardless, except upon the end of the chin, and, more scanty, 
on the upper lip. The head is compressed at the sides, the 
skull arched and thick, the forehead narrow and depressed, and 
the back of the head elongated. The facial angle seventy 
degrees, the nose flat and broad, the lips thick and protruding, 
and the throat and neck full and muscular. A strong odor is 
constantly secreted from the bilious coloring matter beneath the 
epidermis ; and from numbers, under a hot sun, becomes intol- 
erable to a European. 

They have passed on to the south-east, and been largely 
displaced in Hindustan and farther India, but were the primi- 
tive inhabitants of Australia, and still survive in the Papuas of 
New Guinea and the more degraded savage of Australia. They 
also are found in the neighboring South Sea Islands ; and where 
there is an admixture of the Mongolian blood, among other 
modifications, the woolly hair becomes a curling, crisping mop, 
springing out on all sides of the head. To the east, they are 
still found in Laristan, southern Persia, and, as a mixture with 
the Semitic stock, in the black Bedoueen of Arabia. But it is 



ANTHROPOLOGY. 3 1 

only as they have crossed into Africa, either by the Straits at 
the south, or the Isthmus at the north of the Red Sea, and 
passed down into the interior of the continent, that we find 
them in their most congenial and abiding lodging-place. In 
Abyssinia are found natives almost black and with crisp hair, 
but in Senegal and Congo the full negro type is completely 
developed. From hence they have been violently and cruelly 
transplanted as slaves to other continents, and especially to 
America. The Maroons, escaped from Spanish and Portuguese 
masters in South America, have formed independent commu- 
nities in the congenial swampy regions of Guiana, and farther 
on upon the banks of the Amazon, and in the absence of other 
races have rapidly multiplied. 

In addition to these, some put the Malay and American races 
as equally exclusive and distinct. But the Malay is manifestly 
a hybrid stock, and is nowhere marked by a distinctive type 
that is expansively homogeneous. The peculiarities of the 
Mongolian always more or less appear in the pyramidal head, 
prominent cheek bones, and scanty beard, but other modifica- 
tions abound as the mixture of the Nigritian or Caucasian is the 
more abundant. They are usually inhabitants of the coasts and 
parts of islands, but are seldom the controlling people of any 
region. Their most central locality is the peninsula of Malacca, 
but they are found also on the Indo-Chinese coast, in the island 
of Madagascar, in the Pacific Archipelago, and indeed it would 
seem that the extreme South American and Patagonian were 
expansions of the Malay stock. The American, again, is pretty 
manifestly the Mongolian. The hioh cheek bone, the scanty 
beard, and copper complexion, bespeak the Mongolian paren- 
tage j and except in the Esquimau of the north, or the Patago- 
nian of the south, there appears no particular characteristic 
demanding the supposition of any blending of races, and the 
Esquimau may be only the lowest degradation of the Mongolian, 
as the Hottentot and Bushman is of the Nigritian. 



32 ANTHROPOLOGY. 

The three races may in this way be made to include the 
human family, and any other broad and long-continued distinc- 
tions may be considered rather as sub-typical, and indices of 
amalgamation, rather than exclusive typical divisions of race. 
But an exact delineation and separation of the races is of less 
importance than the conviction that all races may participate 
in the common experience ; and for this there is ample assur- 
ance, since they all will be found to possess the characteristic 
traits of humanity. The differences are still within a common 
family. 

Among animals, there is at least as great a distinction between 
such as are undoubtedly of the same species, as in any differ- 
ence of race among men. There are wide differences of race 
in neat cattle, horses, and especially dogs, where there is no. 
ground to suppose that they sprang from an originally distinct 
created ancestry. In the case of swine and sheep, peculiarities 
have arisen within very authentic tradition, from some great 
change in a single case, and which have been perpetuated with 
all their typical marks, in a variety so broad as to make them 
henceforth properly distinct races. Domestication in fowls, as 
well as animals, has produced such remarkable changes, and 
which perpetuate themselves from generation to generation, that 
we ought not to be surprised at the distinctions which circum- 
stances may work among mankind, even to so great a degree 
as to be truly separations of race. Individual differences and 
peculiarities, and class and tribe distinctions, are greater among 
men than among the same species of animals ; it ought, then, 
to be anticipated that human races may be broadly discrimi- 
nated. 

But, while there is this broader diversity in different portions 
of the human family, there is also, on the other hand, stronger 
indications of unity, linking all the typical races into one com- 
mon brotherhood. The common powers of speech and lan- 
guage ; the kindred emotions, sympathies, and appetites ; the 



ANTHROPOLOGY. 33 

convictions of responsibility to law, and the establishment of 
political governments ; the sense of dependence upon an Absolute 
Spirit, and the propensity to some religious worship ; the simi- 
larity of capacity in forming habits, coming under discipline and 
receiving cultivation ; and the sameness of times in the age of ■ 
puberty, menstruation, and gestation, except in the modifica- 
tions of manifest causes ; all determine that mankind of every 
race are yet the children of one family. In addition to all this, 
there is the great fact, that the races amalgamate and propagate 
from generation to generation, which is in contravention of tke 
law between wholly distinct species. A few only can at all 
produce a hybrid offspring in a cross-generation, and when they 
do, the progeny is either sterile or tends back to the species of 
one parent. The conclusion from this is certainly quite sound, 
that the distinctions of race among men are adventitious, and 
that human beings are of the same species. 

The argument for different species through a distinct original 
ancestry, from any supposed different centres of propagation, 
is altogether inconclusive. At the widest distance apart, it is 
still wholly practicable that all should have been cradled in the 
same region. The Patagonians or the Esquimaux may have an 
ancestry who wandered from Central Asia, and such a supposi- 
tion involves no improbabiHty. Indeed, all tradition, so far as 
any is found among the scattered tribes of humanity, as well as 
all other indices, point to a common locality whence all have 
departed. The substantial facts of the Mosaic account are 
of all statements the most probable in themselves, and the 
most consistent with whatever other historical transmissions we 
possess. 

It is not probable that distinctions of race at all took their 
rise in the three sons of Noah. Nor is it to be supposed that 
any three different pairs of the human family, at any age, origi- 
nated the three great distinctive races, and then, excluding and 
exhausting all others, at length came to people the world be- 



34 ANTHROPOLOGY. 

tween them. Strong typical peculiarities somewhere began, and 
absorbed and assimilated all others within them. And thus, 
taking intrinsic germ and extrinsic circumstances, as given in 
humanity and outward nature, we find the fact to be, that man- 
kind has worked its propagations in the three different funda- 
mental types, of the white and bearded, the olive and beardless, 
and the black and crisp-haired races. All other varieties may 
readily be reduced to some blending of these generic peculiar- 
ities. These distinctions of race are older than history, and the 
combination of Egyptian, Assyrian, and Hindu sculpture may 
give us the whole, as complete in unknown centuries backward, 
as any living specimens of the present age can furnish. 

3. Differences of temperament. The different temperaments 
among men have from ancient times, with great unanimity, been 
classified as four, though the source of this division has been 
variously stated. It is most easily conceived by referring it to 
the different subordinate systems which the body as an entire 
system has within itself, and which minister together for the 
growth and preservation of the whole. Conspicuous among 
these are the nen^ous, the muscular, and the digestive systems ; 
of which the nervous and the digestive will each give one dis- 
tinctly-marked temperament, while the muscular system furnishes 
a source as clearly defined for two. 

A predominating energy and activity given to the nervous 
system induces the sanguijie temperament. In the nervous sys- 
tem provision is made for animal sensibility and motion ; and 
where this is preeminently vigorous, the individual is prompt to 
respond to every excitement. In this is the peculiarity of the 
sanguine, or, as sometimes called, the nervous, temperament. 
Such a constitution will readily wake in sudden emotions, and 
be characterized by ardent feeling, quick passions, impetuous 
desires, and lively but transient affections. There is a strong 
propensity to mirth and sport, and it easily habituates itself to a 
life of levity and gaiety. If sudden calamities occur, the san- 



ANTHROPOLOGY. 



35 



guine temperament is readily overwhelmed in excessive grief, 
and melts in floods of tears for every affliction ; but soon loses 
the deep sense of its sorrows, and springs again buoyant to new 
scenes of pleasure. 

In literature, this temperament prompts to a highly-ornamental 
and florid style, and abounds in striking expressions, glowing 
imagery, strong comparisons, and perpetual hyperbole. What- 
ever awakens emotion will be agreeable, and it opens itself 
readily to the excitement of music, or painting, or eloquence ; 
especially when the appeal is made to the more lively and 
sprightly sensibihties. There is a perpetual propensity in all its 
exercises to excess and exaggeration, to intense feeling and 
passionate excitement. The action is. impulsive; the reso- 
lutions suddenly taken, and immediately executed, before 
unexpected difficulties, or long-resisting obstacles, are easily 
disconcerted and turned off" in other directions. 

This temperament is often found strongly marked in indi- 
vidual cases, and sometimes gives its controlling peculiarities to 
national character. It is the temperament widely prevalent in 
the French nation ; and, though much modified in the form of 
its action, is still also the prevalent temperament of the Irish 
people. Single persons, among both the French and Irish, are 
characterized by other temperaments ; but the controlling- type 
is that of the sanguine, which appears in their habits, their liter- 
ature, their eloquence, and their military exploits. 

Where the digestive organization is vigorously active, and the 
vital force goes out strongly in the process of assimilation and 
nutrition, there will be the mdanchoUc temperament. Its gen- 
eral constitutional habit naturally disposes to quietude and soli- 
tary meditation, declining towards serious and often gloomy 
reflections, and under extreme ascerbities becomes a sour and 
austere asceticism. A man of melancholic temperament, how- 
ever, is not necessarily a melancholy man. When moderately 
controlling, such a temperament gives a sedate and contempla- 



36 ANTHROPOLOGY. 

tive habit of mind ; though it may, when strongly prevalent, induce 
sadness and even moroseness. Its prevalent tendency is medi- 
tative ; it delights to live in a world of ideal creations, and will 
often be found voicing itself in lamentations over the departure 
of former goodness and greatness, or perhaps as often in long- 
ings for imagined scenes of ideal perfection. 

This is rather the temperament for particular persons than 
for collective communities ; and can, perhaps, in no case be 
said to have constituted a national pecuHarity. It may be found 
the most frequently in the contemplative and speculating Ger- 
man ; but its clearest exhibition is in scattered individuals 
among all ages. Jeremiah, Homer, Plato, Dante, Raphael, 
Beethoven, Cowper, Byron, Tennyson, Schiller, are all, in differ- 
ent forms, examples of the melancholic temperament. Gener- 
ally the great genius in art, and often also in philosophy, will 
possess this "temperament. 

Where the muscular system is strong and of quick irritability, 
and the connected arterial action is full and rapid, there will be 
given the choleric temperament. Its tendency is to prompt and 
sustained activity, to enlarged plans and hardy, patient endu- 
rance in execution, to difficult enterprises, and courage and 
resolution in meeting and conquering opposition. Its aims are 
high, and its ends comprehensive ; demanding plan and calcu- 
lation for their success, and time and combined instrumentalities 
for their accomplishment. With a bad heart, the enterprises 
may be malignant, and their prosecution shockingly cruel, 
bloody, and ferocious ; or, with a good heart, benevolent, and 
urged on with a generous and noble enthusiasm ; but in each 
case there will be determination, self-reliance, and invincible 
decision and persistence. Magnanimity, self-sacrificing chivalry, 
and exalted heroism, will compel admiration for the actor, even 
in a bad cause, and secure lasting respect and veneration for 
the dauntless champion of truth and righteousness ; and, in 
each of these fields so different in moral estimation, the choleric 



ANTHROPOLOGY. 3/ 

temperament may be found, but direct, determined, and perse- 
vering in both. The energy of muscle stimulates to enterprise 
of mind. 

The old heroes of Lacedemon, the old Roman generals and 
armies, may stand as examples, of numbers together, who have 
been prompted by the influences of a constitutionally choleric 
temperament ; but in quite opposite moral scenes, we may find 
the most striking instances in separate cases. It has revealed 
itself in the ambitious and the benevolent ; the usurping tyrant 
and the strenuous resister of tyranny. Caesar and Brutus had 
each a choleric temperament. Bonaparte and Howard, Hamp- 
den and Laud, Herod and Paul, all were choleric. 

On the other hand, if the muscular system is less energetic 
and irritable, and the vascular system more quiet and the 
circulation calm and equable, there will be the phlegmatic 
temperament. This, again, is named from the extreme indices 
of its class ; and when the temperament is emphatically phleg- 
matic, it is meant that the mind is heavy and torpid, and the 
man sluggish and approaching to the stupid. But when only 
moderately phlegmatic, this temperament is especially favorable 
for well directed, long sustained, and effective mental activity. 
In the quiet and orderly movement of the vital functions, and 
the well tempered muscular energy, the mind finds its oppor- 
tunity to go out full and free to any work, with a sound and 
calm judgment. Where the sanguine would be impulsive and 
fitful, the moderately phlegmatic will be self-balanced and sta- 
ble ; where the melancholic would be visionary, and either 
romantic or dejected, this will be practical, judicious, and 
cheerful ; and where the choleric might be strenuous and obsti- 
nate, self-willed and irascible ; this will exhibit equanimity, 
patience, and calm self-reliance. 

The Dutch, as a nation, approach the extreme phlegmatic 
point; the philosophic German mind is phlegmatic, tempered 
with the melancholic ; and the practical English mind is phleg- 



3S ANTHROPOLOGY. 

matic, modified by the choleric. The Dutchman plods, the 
German speculates, the Englishman executes. The New-Eng- 
land mind is more intensely inventive and executive than its 
parent Anglo-Saxon stock, in that the Yankee temperament is 
less phlegmatic and more choleric. The moderately phleg- 
matic temperament has given the world some of the most noble 
specimens of humanity. The patriarch Joseph, the prophet 
Daniel, the philosopher Newton, and the patriot Washington, 
all were moderately phlegmatic. These temperaments are not 
always distinctly outlined. They may be so blended in some 
persons, as Shakespeare or Leibnitz, that we cannot tell the 
prevailing temperament ; but the distinction remains as an ob- 
vious general fact. But though men differ among themselves 
from this constitutional difference of temperament, there is still 
a common experience for them all. 

4. Differences arising from bodily weakness. 

In the immaturity of bodily development in youth, the action 
of the mind is also immature, nor can any intellectual culture 
hasten very much the mental faculties to maturity beyond the 
growth of the body. An earlier and better course of instruc- 
tion may give to one child's mind much greater attainments 
than to another ; but at the widest practicable difference, it will 
still be one child's mind differing from another child's, and 
neither will show the manly mind until the body has its manly 
stature. And thus also in the decline of life through growing 
years ; the body does not long pass its maturity, and begin to 
experience the infirmities and decrepitude of age, but that the 
vigor of mental exercise suffers a similar decline. The steps 
are not always, nor indeed often, exactly equal between the 
two ; — the mind sometimes seems to triumph over every bod- 
ily infirmity, — still the steps tend ever in the same direction ; 
and while one may hasten at times faster than the other, they are 
not long at the same time found going in opposite directions. 

The sickness of the body, at any period of its development. 



ANTHROPOLOGY. . 39 

works its effect also in the actions of the mind. The mental 
faculties are ordinarily paralyzed, in the languor and weakness 
of bodily disease. Instances are sometimes given of feeble 
health and bodily suffering with much mental activity and 
power ; but such cases are rare, and though perhaps occasion- 
ally giving examples of an energy of mind, which resists and 
conquers the tendencies of a sickly body, yet, unless preter- 
naturally quickened by the very excitement of bodily distress, 
the strong probability is, that those very minds would have had 
more vigorous and active exercise had they been lodged in 
sounder bodies. They can hardly constitute exceptions to the 
general rule, that the sound mind must have a sound body for 
its sound expression. The dismemberment or derangement of 
any particular organ of sense affects at once the power of per- 
ception through that organ ; and a given degree of violence to 
the bodily structure, and especially of percussion upon the brain, 
immediately arrests all consciousness and leaves a blank in all 
the operations of the mind. Sudden shocks given to the bodily 
frame are often attended by the distressing mental phenomena 
of swooning, syncope, delirium, etc. 

A still more remarkable difference of the mind's action, ap- 
pearing in connection with bodily exhaustion, is found in the 
state of sleep. Every sensation and motion requires the expen- 
diture of its exact equivalent of nervous force, which force 
thus used becomes used up, and is no more available. Such 
a process continued without interruption would exhaust the 
nervous energy, and neither sensation nor motion could longer 
be. Provision is therefore made in the bodily system for inter- 
rupting this exercise, and, by repairing the waste which sensation 
and motion require, furnishing means for their continued repe- 
tition. These interruptions are known as sleep, wherein the 
body has slipped away from the activity of its sensory and 
motor powers, and the mind also has slipped away from its 
self- consciousness and self-direction. Thus both the mind and 



40 ANTHROPOLOGY. 

body sleep. Urgent claims and exciting exigencies may drive 
off sleep for a time, and protract the period of wakefulness ; but 
at length there comes the Hmit, beyond which no effort nor 
exigency can prevent sleep. The fatigued soldier sleeps amid 
the carnage of battle ; the exhausted sailor sleeps upon the top 
of the mast ; and instances are related like that of Damiens, who 
slept upon the rack in the midst of his tortures. When the 
man again awakes in clear consciousness, he finds both his 
bodily and mental faculties revived and invigorated. 

Sleep does not imply entire quiescence either of body or mind. 
Respiration, the circulation of the blood, digestion, and assimi- 
lation do not cease while the body sleeps. Indeed, it is during 
sleep that the functions of nutrition go on unhindered, repairing 
the tissue, and restoring the energy which wakefulness had 
wasted. It is especially the nervous system whose activity is 
suspended in sleep. Plants, having no nervous system, can be 
said neither to sleep nor to wake ; and probably the same is true 
in the simple forms of animalcular Hfe. 

It is only in respect of some of its functions, not of all, that 
the mind can be said to be inactive in sleep. Its power of per- 
ceiving external objects is not exercised ; its self-consciousness 
seems wanting ; its volitions, at least so far as consciously mani- 
fested, are suspended; and yet there are some facts which 
indicate its continued and profound activity. Instances are not 
wanting where persons have arisen in deep sleep and performed 
mental operations which they had vainly striven to do when 
awake. Poems and discourses have been composed in sleep. 
Long-forgotten facts which the mind by no efforts when awake 
could recollect have been recalled in dreams, and retained when 
the mind again awoke. Unless there be a continued activity 
of some of the mental powers during sleep, it is not easy to 
account for the fact, that the mind can accustom itself to obey 
its purpose made before going to sleep, to awake at a certain 
hour, as experiment has repeatedly shown can be done. 



ANTHROPOLOGY. 4 1 

5. Differences from the interaction of body and mind upon 
each other. 

Body and mind are so closely connected that it may be 
doubted whether anything ever takes place in the one without 
registering its effect in the other. Not only is the action of the 
mind powerfully affected, as already noticed by the condition 
of the body, but the condition of the body is often so manifestly 
dependent upon the operation of the mind, that probably every 
mental exercise could by the skilful eye be detected in its bodily 
expression. Physicians have long known, and very carefully 
regarded this fact in their medical practice. Confidence and the 
expectation of happy results are almost the necessary conditions 
of any very favorable effect from any prescribed remedies. Not 
unfrequently most remarkable cures of chronic diseases occur 
from the strong excitement of intense expectation, while at other 
times diseases prove fatal from an irritable or a desponding 
state of mind, which might otherwise, to all appearance, have 
been readily cured. Epidemics often spread through large 
communities, from the general prevalence of a panic, or diffused 
sympathy over the region, and cease when the panic subsides, 
or the public attention becomes directed to other objects. 

A very slight emotion may hasten or retard the beating of the 
pulse or the play of the lungs, while strong mental agitations so 
immediately and invariably show themselves upon the body, 
that we at once determine the inward exercise from the outward 
bodily affection. Joy, grief, anger, fear, etc., when strongly ac- 
tive, are as readily apprehended in the 'countenance, as by a 
direct communication with the spirit itself 

Remarkable cases of mental emotion reacting upon bodily 
organization are sometimes given in the effects upon the unborn 
infant, from strong maternal excitement. So, also, there are 
instances where a healthy infant has seemed to be poisoned, and 
has actually died at the breast, when the mother was suddenly 
and powerfully agitated by some unexpected tidings. The adult 



42 ANTHROPOLOGY. 

body is sometimes strongly and permanently affected, from the 
reaction of powerful mental excitement. Digestion is known to 
cease by the influence of violent passion. Lasting distortions 
of the muscles, and a changing of the hair to permanent white- 
ness, have been induced by paroxysms of mental agony. 

Bodily habits also arise and become confirmed, through the 
action of some permanent mental peculiarities. A peculiar train 
of thought, or course of study, or any special channel through 
which the intellectual activity is made to move, will shape a per- 
son's air and general manners and demeanor. Hence different 
professions and employments in life, where strongly engrossing, 
give their distinctive peculiarities, and form well-known classes 
of men in their general appearance. So the members of the 
body, by the long control of the mind over them, become habitu- 
ated to certain movements, and thus are made skilful in many 
employments. The limbs move almost spontaneously from such 
habits, while formerly the action could scarcely be effected by 
the most painful attention. So in mechanical trades, playing on 
musical instruments, especially in penmanship, and the use of 
the organs in speech, the muscular moveinent becomes so much 
a matter of habit that the man ceases to think of his voluntary 
control over it. 

Strong mental effort often indicates itself in external bodily 
changes and motions, and the kind of inner action marks its 
struggling energy in the appropriate outward expression ; the 
eyebrows are raised, or the lips contracted, or the nostrils di- 
lated, or the shoulders shrugged, or even the whole form 
expanded and elevated, from the mental energizing. A player 
at bowls or quoits involuntarily distorts and turns his whole 
body awry, when that which is thrown is seen moving wide from 
the mark ; while the body is as spontaneously made erect and 
rigidly straight when the thing thrown is moving direct to hit its 
object. When striving to communicate in an imperfectly under- 
stood language, the mind, in the same way, reacts upon the 



ANTHROPOLOGY. 43 

body. Unconsciously, every limb and muscle is made to ges- 
ticulate, and the. whole body takes on those attitudes which help 
the mind to give over its thoughts to another. Particular and 
permanent expressions of countenance are thus naturally in- 
duced. The inner emotions have so energized to give their 
outward expression, and the frequent action has so brought the 
muscles under their controlling forms, that the marks have 
become firmly set upon the features, and the face is made to 
look the full reflection of the inner prevaiHng. disposition. The 
old proverb, " Handsome is that handsome does," is thus founded 
in truth ; and the general principles of physiognomy have a 
truly philosophical basis. The law of mental action has its 
exact correspondence in the bodily organization. 

Our short study of anthropological distinctions shows clearly 
that humanity, though having intrinsic differences, is yet, in the 
common conviction, a separate whole, and has a common 
experience which, while it includes all men, embraces mankind 
only. This common experience holds all that is peculiar to 
man, and excludes all that is not in some way common to man. 
It thus holds all that is necessary to be known in order that we 
may know what is in man. If then " the proper study of man- 
kind is man," the only way for man to know himself and his 
fellows is carefully and thoroughly to study his and their com- 
mon experience. This then is our field, which alone is hence- 
forth to furnish us the data for an Efnpirical Psychology. 



EMPIRICAL SCIENCE. 



TO experience is to try by using; and so experience, in 
common, is the hial of any faculty by its use. This defi- 
nition gives the full meaning to that experience we have now 
attained in the study of Anthropology, and which we have 
termed the Com7non Experience of Humanity. There are some 
men who seek to know this common experience more accurately 
and thoroughly than does the common mind, and so they try 
the experience over again, and subject its facts as they recur to 
a more rigid and exact scrutiny. By such repeated and assisted 
observation, and by registering the results with fidelity for lasting 
future reference, there is gained what is well known as Scientific 
Experience. When the facts whicli have been thus tested have 
been sorted and classified, we have Ejiipirical Science, which, 
beginning in and remaining with the common experience as it 
must do, can only become a Universal Science by reaching to 
all experience. In its highest experiment it may find, a faculty 
unacknowledged by sense, but which establishes a philosophy 
comprehensive of all senses. 

Section I. The General Method of Empirical Science. — 
The end sought in empirical science is a more accurate and 
thorough knowledge of the facts in common experience ; and 
this end is found only by repeatedly testing the certitude of old 
facts through new experiments. This involves, as the general 
method for the science, that the facts should be exactly attained. 



EMPIRICAL SCIENCE. 45 

correctly assorted in classes, and consistently arranged in a 
system. 

I. The attainment of the facts exactly, 
II. The assortment of the facts in classes correctly. 
III. The arrangement of the classes in system consistently. 
In following out this method deliberately we shall see that it 
is not anything factitious, but that in all ways it only expresses 
the natural tendency. 

I. In the exact attainment of the facts. 

The facts of hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, touching, are 
distinguished from each other by the common mind. The com- 
mon experience thus is not a promiscuous mass in undistin- 
guished manifoldness, but has already been made a world of 
intelligent facts in their singleness and definiteness, by an actual 
trial in the common use of the special senses. The scientific 
experience tries these facts over again, in the use of these same 
special senses, which are now greatly assisted by their repeated 
and more varied and careful appHcation. The result is a more 
exact recognition of the old facts by this new testing observation. 
And then the like scientific trial is carried out further within the 
as yet unexplored facts of nature. The interest in these new 
experiments incessantly urges on to fresh attainments, that all 
secrets may be laid open. The common experience gains large 
accessions in these new experiments, not in their scientific dress, 
but by its recognition of the bare facts which the armed and 
assisted senses have discovered. 

II. In their correct classification. 

The common mind has made its marked distinctions in its 
acknowledged attainments, as we have seen in Anthropology, 
and has separated mute matter from Hving bodies, vegetative 
hfe from animal, and the brute experience from the human ; 
and then the further study has found in the human the separa- 
tions of race, sex, temperaments, with the resulting changes from 
the conflicting and cooperating interactions of mind and body. 



46 EMPIRICAL SCIENCE. 

All these invite the scientific mind to test their correctness, and 
then to follow them out to a more complete classification in the 
newly-discovered sorts of facts which later experiments disclose. 

This testing of like by like naturally leads to the discovery of 
new similitudes and differences, and thus to the multiplication 
of sorts demanding appropriate classifications. The urgency in 
this direction of improved and enlarged classification must man- 
ifestly prove to be practically resistless. 

III. In their consistent systematic arrangement. 

The certain tendency of such empirical sorting of the facts 
old and new through all their ascertained varieties, is to get the 
varieties to stand in their specific connections, and these in their 
rising generic relations, all urging the solicitous attempt to find 
for all — which, however, no merely empirical science can find 
— their comprehensive conception in an absolute source that 
may be both original and ultimate. 

There are two methods in which a classification may be con- 
ceived as progressing : one, where the order of nature is followed, 
by beginning at the centre and working from thence outward ; 
the other, by taking nature as already a product, and beginning 
at the outside and working within, as far as practicable. The 
first may be called the order of 7'eason, inasmuch as the reason 
would so take the moving force, or conditioning principle, at 
the centre, and follow it out to the consummation ; the second 
may be called fhe order of science, inasmuch as in experience, 
the thing is already given, and we begin on the outside and 
follow up the discovery, as far as we may, to see how the prod- 
uct was effected. The genius on whom first dawned the idea 
of a watch, would begin, in the thought, with the moving power 
at the centre, and carry this force, in its development of forms 
and connections, outward, till in his completed conception he 
had the whole in its unity, from the main-spring to the moving- 
hands over the dial-plate. But the discoverer of how a watch 
already in experience had been invented, would begin his exam- 



EMPIRICAL SCIENCE. 4/ 

illation at the hour- index, and go backwards toward the central 
force in the main-spring. Both get the science of the watch ; 
one makes it, the other learns it. 

In empirical science we can only be learners. We must study 
what is, not project what may be. Nature began at the centre 
and worked outward. She had her vital force in its salient 
point, and carried that out to the mature development. The 
germ expanded to the ripened plant ; the embryo grew to the 
adult stature. But the empirical philosopher can take nature's 
products only so far as already done, and study as he may how 
nature's process has been. He is shut out from nature's hiding- 
place at the centre, and cannot determine in the primal cause 
what the effects must be. He experiments, and only learns 
nature as she has already made herself to be. 

So we must study experience. We are to attain the facts in 
completed system, just as the reality is, and not form some 
ingenious theory, nor adopt some other man's theory, which we 
strive to maintain without nature, or in spite of nature. Valid 
facts, classified according to their actual connections, will give a 
science which proves itself. In it, all confusion will be reduced 
to order ; it will expound all anomalies and expel all absurdities, 
and stand out the exact counterpart of the reality. 

The general order of classification, thus determined to be 
that of science ; there need only be added the following general 
directions : — 

1. Permanent and inherent relationships between the facts 
are alone to be regarded. 

2. Homogeneous facts only may be classified. Nature never 
mingles contraries together. 

3. The system must find a place for all the facts. 

4. When completed, the system must be harmonious and 
self-consistent. 

Section II. Some of the most General Facts in Empirical 
Psychology. — This general method of empirical science will at 



48 EMPIRICAL SCIENCE. 

once disclose some of the most important general facts of em- 
pirical psychology. In the common experience of men there 
is a direct impulse to test and examine this experience ; and 
this introduces immediately the most distinctive characteristic of 
humanity from all other facts in common experience, viz., the 
capability to exercise free thought. Every application of scien- 
tific experiment evinces this most important General Fact : — 

I. The Actual Existence of Mind. The common experience 
has made the common discrimination between matter and mind, 
and the more close discernment of a difference between animal 
sensation with its appetites, and man's reflection with its self- 
restraint ; but these differences, though standing in full convic- 
tion, have not so been examined and tested that their certitude 
can be fairly expounded and defended. Under the stimulant 
of surprise and wonder on the occurrence of some noted event, 
and the solicitude of an anxious curiosity to find the full truth 
of the experience, a wide and wise arrangement is made for 
trying over again a similar event at any time of its probable 
recurrence. In such an agency for arranging and applying new 
experiments in the interest of science, there is the opportunity 
for studying the human mind to better advantage than the entire 
field of common experience can present. 

Rising out of common experience, and here overlooking and 
anew testing some of its old facts, we may well term this scien- 
tific agency, emphatically and eminently, Mind, and may take 
occasion to ascertain its being and its properties by its scientific 
working much more convincingly than our anthropological studies 
afforded. Wherever, in any and every age, the works of nature 
and of man have been subjected to close experiment, there this 
mind has evinced its presence and its power, and never more 
abundantly than in our own generation. The proofs that it is 
are no more unquestionable than the manifestations of what it 
is. Coming out of and standing over common experience, that 
it may anew try and test its certitude to the end and for the sake 



EMPIRICAL SCIENCE. 49 

of its own knowledge, it therein discloses its self- activity and 
eminent spontaneity. It finds its motive in itself, and works to 
the end of its own education. It intends to clear its vision and 
satisfy its own intelligence by its own action. Of its own accord, 
and for its own conviction and soif-possession of the truth, it sets 
itself to the analysis of every fact, and the accurate and com- 
plete sorting and classifying of all common experience. . 

We may confidently, then, take this scientific mind as having 
attained to the knowledge of its being and spontaneous self- 
action, while we leave to a coming more favorable opportunity 
the explanation of the difference between this spontaneous free- 
thinking and the responsible agency of a will in liberty. 

Such scientific mind in its spontaneity has the capability to 
reach a further General Fact : — 

2. That it can distinguish its objects from each other, and all 
these from itself. In possession of this scientific spontaneity it 
may apply its new experiments to any material fact, and test its 
impossibility to evince any exhibition of its origination of action 
from itself. Matter is mechanical only, and may push or pull 
only as it is pushed or pulled, and may exhibit motion accord- 
ingly. The motion continues while the force acts, and ceases 
when the force finds its equilibration ; and when the matter 
rests it never sets itself again in motion. It has inertia, not 
spontaneity. Matter may be mechanically so arranged as to 
start in motion at a given touch or a continuously-applied 
spontaneity ; and such machine may have the semblance of spon- 
taneity, and its movement may be called automatic, just as the 
clock may move in time and strike its own hours, or the music- 
box may play out its own tune after its own measure ; but no 
machine can put itself together, nor start itself in motion, nor 
wind up itself when run down, nor repair its own injuries, nor 
reproduce itself in its descendants. But the plant with vegeta- 
tive life is truly spontaneous, and, in appropriate conditions, 
starts itself from its germ, builds up and repairs the waste and 



50 EMPIRICAL SCIENCE. 

injuries of its own body, and reproduces others of its kind 
tlirough passing generations. The scientific free mind makes its 
close and fair experiments on mute matter and Hving body, and 
knowing what its own spontaneity is, knows also that no experi- 
ment finds as yet spontaneous matter except as life is infused 
through its entire organism, and that in this spontaneous origi- 
nation of motion is the discrimination between mechanical force 
and living energy. 

And so, again, scientific experiment finds the higher sponta- 
neity of sentient life in the animal, which evinces its capabihty 
of building up a nerve organism and exhibiting sensation, and 
conscious perception, and locomotion, and reproduction of the 
like organisms in its posterity; and in this advanced sponta- 
neity, the true scientist knows, is the difference between the 
plant and the animal ; and also knows that no fair experiment 
has as yet found the plant passing over into the animal sponta- 
neity, and then doing the work and reproducing the descendants 
that do the work of conscious perception through special sense- 
organs. So matter and hfe and animal sensation are known by 
the human mind to differ from each other, and are never found 
in any experiment to run together and confound their distinc- 
tions within any line of descendants. 

But in and by its scientific experiments the scientific mind 
does know itself to have sprung out from common experience 
to its higher knowledge, and that the common experience by 
appropriate cultivation may be anywhere made to furnish exam- 
ples of the like exaltation, — examples which no cultivation of 
the plant or the animal have ever furnished. Herein the sci- 
entist learns that it is in his his/her native endowment that he 
can distinguish himself from all the lower kind of being which 
can become objects of his observation. So, also, he learns 
that while all his fellow-scientists exhibit the like scientific spon- 
taneity, he distinguishes himself from them by his knowing that 
his work has been done from his own free accord, and in the 



EMPIRICAL SCIENCE. 5 I 

end and interest of his own attainment of the truth ; and thus 
that he and they differ from each othe^ only in this, that each, 
while self- moved, has his own separate spontaneity, identical 
with none other, as his mover. 

3. The mind can distinguish between itself and its acts. The 
scientific mind recognizes that its acts are its own, and that they 
spring from its spontaneous energising ; and that thus they stand 
out face to face as object {obvius jaciens^ ioi it, while it stands 
beneath them as subject {sub Jaciens) . As subjective, the mind 
possesses them, and as objective, they are the mind's properties ; 
and thus the mind distinguishes between it and them, and can 
make them the objects for its repeated and exact experiments, 
as readily as any objects it attains from matter, plant, or animal. 
In its own field of conscious objects there is at least as sure a 
ground for empirical science as in the field of common expe- 
rience. Of its own accord it can make its own acts its facts for 
scientific experiment, and try over again the facts of its own expe- 
rience with, perhaps, more confident conviction of the certitude 
of their being, relations, and assorted classifications, than in the 
case of any scientific system of matter, plant, or animal. To the 
mind itself, its own inspection must give the surest conviction ; 
but for common reception there must be an accordance with the 
common scientific conclusions, or the discordant single expe- 
rience must be considered an exempt case standing alone in its 
idiosyncracy. The attained common experience insures that 
all single experiments in one mind must be in general con- 
formity with all others. The common experience, tested by 
accordant scientific experiments, must be the criterion for 
accepting the inductions of any one mind from its own exami- 
nation. 

From the above General Facts of mind we may attain a 
generalization universally comprehensive of experience as dis- 
tinguished into two classes. The human mind, as given in 
scientific experience, stands as one class, over against which all 



52 EMPIRICAL SCIENCE. 

Other being — animal, plant, and matter, as they are found in 
scientific experiments — stands as another class. The one class 
can be cultivated to the elevation of scientific spontaneity, the 
exercise of free -thought ; the other can exhibit no pretension to 
the attainment of mental dignity that deserves classification with 
scientific mind. The higher orders of animals perceive, remem- 
ber; and perhaps exercise thought and judgment, and form 
deductions from remembered experiences, sometimes seeming 
to do this with surprising acuteness ; but no sentient brute has 
ever originated and executed a scientific experiment. We may 
thus divide all that is included as fact within common expe- 
rience, and one class will contain only the physical, and the 
other class will be wholly psychical. The former can be tested 
by experiment ; the latter only can apply the test and make the 
systematic classification. The psychical class may direct its ex- 
periments to the ends of a science that shall comprehend and 
classify its own facts of being and action, and this will give an 
Empirical Psychology. 

The point thus attained permits us to see that, while physical 
science may be prosecuted by mind, there can be no science, 
physical or psychical, that can be attained without mind ; and 
that Empirical Science in general can no further be pursued 
intelligibly but through the appUcation of psychical agency. 
The course of science must needs now pass through Empirical 
Psychology, and thence attain to a Philosophy that may com- 
prehend the physical and psychical together ; and of the twain, 
with all their differences, must ultimately make one consistent 
and universal system. 



EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY; 

ITS MEANING, ITS PRIMITIVE FACTS, AND ITS 
SPECIFIC METHOD. 



Section I. The Meaning of Empirical Psychology. 

THE facts needed in our science are already given in com- 
mon experience, and empirical science in general requires 
that they be found, classified, and completely systematized. 
Scientific experiment finds these facts standing in two distinct 
divisions, as Matter and Mind, and thus classifies all facts of 
human experience as Physical Facts and Psychical Facts. But 
science seeks unity, and can only rest as these two classes of 
facts are set together in one consistent system. This, however, 
is of course impossible without some element which can domi- 
nate them both ; and, since it is supposed that all the facts in 
humanity are contained within this physical and psychical expe- 
rience, this dominating element has hitherto been mostly sought 
in one or the other of these two classes, — on the one side regu- 
lating all scientific thought by the working of Matter in expe- 
rience, and on the other by the working of Mind in experience. 
Neither of these two schools of thought — known as the older 
logical, and the newer critical, modes of expounding Psychol- 
ogy — can find in its side of experience the one principle that 
may comprehend both sides ; and we therefore here pass them 
both by, leaving for a more favorable position, at the end of this 
work, the summary of their process and the result each attains. 



54 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. . 

Since each has been found hopelessly defective, we shall look 
elsewhere for the dominating principle we need, and see if, by 
a careful experiment, this may not be found in a higher human 
faculty than any indicated by Scientific Thought. 

This indicates the meaning which we wish to give to our 
Empirical Psychology, and the end we design to attain by it. 
Inasmuch as the human psychical being differs from the animal, 
and all other physical being, in that he can test all facts by 
scientific experiments, so we propose to test by accurate experi- 
ments the whole mode of human knowing in experience. We 
expect thereby not only to get the truth about this knowing, but 
also to put ourselves in position for determining correctly whether 
this scientific superiority in man is because he has a greater 
degree of the spontaneous faculty than the animal, or whether it 
is because he has something different in kind from anything 
which the animal possesses. We wish to see whether it be not 
possible to make a deeper experiment, whereby there shall be 
scientifically disclosed another and higher faculty altogether than 
that of spontaneous reflective thought, by the presence of which 
higher faculty this free-thought has been all along quickened, 
even if not acknowledged, and which when fully recognized may 
be seen to have the clear power — otherwise found unattain- 
able — to bring the physical and psychical together in one 
system. Such a satisfactory result we quite confidently assure 
the ingenuous student will reward his patient perseverance. 

Such being our meaning and intent in the work before us, we 
ought to get at the outset, and then not lose, a clear recognition 
of the exact distinction between the physical and the psychical, 
which scientific experiment attains as plain matter of fact, — 
though we need not yet make any attempt to expound what 
lies back of the fact, and determines that it and our expe- 
rience of it are as they are. Matter is found with mechanical 
push and pull inhering within it ; and when these two are bal- 
anced in equilibrating resistance, there is rest ; while when the 



ITS MEANING. 55 

one exceeds the other, there is motion. In motion or at rest 
matter can originate no changes ; and this inabihty is its inertia, 
the opposite of spontaneity. Matter thus may be so arranged, 
from agencies beyond itself, that on the balance between its 
push and pull being broken there will be motion to a designed 
end till the balance is restored ; and such movement is known 
as automatic. 

Life in matter, living body in certain specified conditions, 
originates motion from itself, makes and mends its own body, 
and reproduces its descendant organisms from generation to 
generation. This is spontaneity in its lowest mode of manifesta- 
tion. The conditions invite or solicit the movement, and but 
for their presence the spontaneity does not act, but in their 
presence the Hfe originates motion of its own accord. 

Sensation in a living organism, under specified conditions, 
induces perception, which may be followed by recollection and 
concluding in judgments from sense experience, in a being 
which can also propagate its kind from age to age at its own 
accord. This is quite another and higher manifestation of spon- 
taneous action than the plant reveals, and comes from what may 
be known as sentient spontaneity. 

None of the above modes of manifesting motion are ever 
found, in any experiment, to pass over from their own mode of 
action after their kind and invade the province of another spon- 
taneity ; and no one of these can, in any experiment as yet made, 
be so cultivated by art as to invent and apply the tests of scien- 
tific experiment. They all stand together in the one division 
of Physical Being. 

Over against all these stands the human being, with his com- 
mon experience, and also the many cultivated minds of his 
class who are scientifically trying over again the common expe- 
rience of all, and who thus reveal the capability of a much 
superior mode of experience known as spontaneous thinking. 
This, in given conditions, originates new and compUcated series 



56 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

of experiments, rigidly testing old experiences and then classify- 
ing scientifically . only the well-attested facts. The common 
mind is accounted to have the same native faculties as the scien- 
tific, and so the human family with all its distinctions of race 
and cultivation, having each in its degree this higher endow- 
ment of a scientific spontaneity, goes to make up the class of 
Psychical Being. These two great classes make up the full sum 
of common experience, whose facts are to be found, sorted, and 
universally systematized. It is our meaning now scientifically 
to try over and thoroughly test all psychical facts, and thus to 
pass from the field of General Science to Empirical Psychology. 

Section II. Primitive Facts. — The entire psychological 
process has one invariable order. Experiments testing it a 
thousand times over will all agree in the same general fact as 
the prime starting-point, and in the same succeeding procedure 
from this. Sensation, consciousness, knowing, feeling, and willing 
will mark the beginning of the movement and its orderly succes- 
sion in every case. These might properly be termed comprehen- 
sive facts, since taken together they will be found to comprehend 
the entire psychology ; but we call them primitive facts, because 
each is not only necessarily prior to its follower, but is truly primal 
as a class for all the particulars which it embraces. 

Man and animal are both alike in that they both perceive, and 
that their perceptions may be both subjected to scientific experi- 
ments, but they differ in that the animal cannot be educated to 
make the experiments itself, while the man may try over his 
experience by scientific tests, and may thus become the scien- 
tist, even though the common mind while yet uncultivated hardly 
shows a sign of doing this. It is this scientific mind standing 
over the common mind and looking in upon its experience which 
we are now to contemplate, as it searches out and, step by step, 
makes the whole general process of knowing clear for itself, and 
then puts it in the systematic form which may become clear also 
to the attentive learner. Let us now note what results from a 



PRIMITIVE FACTS. 57 

more particular trying and testing of the above-named Primitive 
Facts in their closely-connected order. The process will need 
to be diligently pondered, for, however carefully and correctly it 
may be presented, unless the student by his own scrutiny follows 
and fully apprehends it, he remains in the common experience, 
without scientific knowledge. 

I. Sensation. All tests of experiment in any way fairly ap- 
plied will show that any organ of sense, left in vacancy, remains 
inactive. There must first be an invading agency from without, 
and then a receiving agency from within, or no act of percep- 
tion is finally attained. The outer body and finger must touch, 
the vibrating light must enter the eye, and the undulating air the 
ear, or no advance is begun toward perception. And, further, 
not only must the invasion and reception be within the organ, 
but the two activities there cooperate concurrently to one result. 
The received light, or air, must conspire with the receiving eye, 
or ear, to induce the one affection appropriate for the organ, or 
the perceiving process is not hastened but hindered. And still 
further, the activities must blend in the organ and be no more 
vibrating light, or air, and receiving eye, or ear, but the co-ac- 
tion of light and spontaneous retina, or air and tympanum, must 
both together join in one onward movement. Such conjunct 
activity becomes a content in the sense, and is neither the diverse 
action of outer and inner any more, but the one completed stage 
of sensation. It is not yet either object or subject, nor is it any 
more either invasion or reception, but all have become sensation, 
as merely sense-content. 

2. Consciousness. Sensation is not yet conscious, but only 
the prime fact necessary in order to consciousness. The 
mechanical agency invading, and the spontaneous agency receiv- 
ing, have blended in a content that is so in the sense as to 
condition its conscious awakening. The mechanical in the con- 
tent invites, elicits, the spontaneous therein to arouse itself in 
wakefulness; and this waking state, still in concert with the 



58 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

eliciting, is the opening dawn of consciousness. It is that incip- 
ient knowing which takes the content in mass as a somewhat, 
but has "naught distinctively," and is literally what the word 
imports, a knowing a someivhat that is all together, that is 
unseparated ; a content that has itself and its object still undis- 
tinguished. 

An ingenious painting aptly represents it. A sister, with look 
and attitude slily mischievous, is touching gently with a feather 
the nostril of her sleeping brother; the point caught by the 
artist, in the sleeper, is that precisely between full sensation and 
active knowing. The disturbed nostril is slightly contracted, the 
eyelids are just opening, and the fingers of one hand are slightly 
parting ; all reveal instinctive action only. An aroused sponta- 
neity is shown awaking in movements that as yet indicate nothing 
of any direct recognition of the surrounding objects and occur- 
rences. The content in sense has become a content in con- 
sciousness, but it is still utterly indiscriminate and commingled. 
The consciousness has still subject and object, knowing and 
known, all together. 

Consciousness may be still further illustrated by its analogy 
with light in' vision : we do not see it, but we see other things 
by it. // is blended with the colors which are in it and which 
must be separated from it by spontaneous, intelligent action, 
before they can become distinct perception. The consciousness 
acting is in its awaking as the light is in its entering the organ ; 
but the awakened consciousness and the entered light are states 
rather than acts, in which all perceptions and cognitions are con- 
structed. In such analogy the consciousness is truly "the hght 
of all our seeing," and the content in sense, advanced to the 
content in consciousness, is there in condition for all further 
spontaneous action. The action and its constructing limitations 
and distinctions are henceforth in the light, and what is either 
doing or done in consciousness becomes thenceforward the 
present or the recollected possession of the subjective mind that 



PRIMITIVE FACTS. 59 

constructs and retains it. Sensation and consciousness are 
primitive facts that must be tested by experiment, from an out- 
side scientific agency; but whatever is done and remains in 
consciousness can be tested anew at any time by the conscious 
subject himself, putting himself within the capability of self- 
inspection. Experience once in consciousness holds conscious- 
ness open ever after. Excepting in sleep, syncope, anaesthesia, 
etc., the coming in of new content to the sense passes on to 
the consciousness, and experience has there its perpetual record 
and abiding history. 

Within consciousness we shall find, as one state with its three 
stages, the successive preliminary facts : — 

3. Knowing, feeling, and willing, each primitive in order to 
the experience of its sttccessor. 

I. The scientific experimentalist has the whole field of com- 
mon consciousness and his own personal consciousness from 
whence to derive his new empirical tests ; and any exact experi- 
ment made from others' experience, or from his own, will convince 
him that the content once in consciousness is a conditional 
incitement to the awakened spontaneity that it take this com- 
mingled content, and open its several parts to the light, and thus 
know it in its separate parts, and the parts in their relations, and 
so in the end take the whole in its consistent connections. The 
content that has aroused the mind to consciousness will elicit 
the mind's further curiosity to hold that content in a thoroughly 
discriminating, and by that also in a completely harmonizing 
and uniting point of view. 

The power, in general, for all cognition is known as Capa- 
bility; the particular powers for distinctive ways of knowing are 
termed Faculties ; and the agency as a mental capability for all 
knowing is termed the Intellect. The Intellect is the mind's 
agency in knowing. By definitely separating and distinctly com- 
paring and correctly combining or connecting the content which 
has aroused the mind to consciousness, the mind exercises its 



6o EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

power over it, brings it within its grasp or apprehensio7i, does 
what it can with it, and thus kens or knows it. The tendency 
is to know, and, once in consciousness, the first step onward 
in the experience to which the content leads the awakened 
spontaneity, is that of clear cognition. 

2. The spontaneity becomes more intense at each step in its 
ongoing process. What was a mere inclination in sensation 
becomes a positive tendency in the consciousness, and has now 
attained a very decided urgency at the completion of cognition. 
It reveals itself as attracted towards, or repelled from, its more 
advanced stage ; and this we term a feeling, though we need a 
somewhat careful discrimination in taking this term. We say, 
in cognition by the touch, that the object feels hard or soft, 
smooth or rough, hot or cold, etc. ; but we do not say this in 
the cognitions through any other sense-organ. The object tastes 
sweet or sour, smells savory or unsavory, looks bright or dingy, 
and sounds hoarse or shrill ; and yet, in the first-mentioned case 
of " feeling" hot or cold, the action is as decidedly in cognition 
as in either of the other cases. The properties are known in the 
touch, as in the taste, smell, etc. ; but after the knowing, in all 
the cases, comes a drawing or repelling, which is specially what 
we mean by feeling. The degree of heat to the touch, when 
known, has then the further advance in the spontaneous process, 
viz., that it is agreeable or disagreeable, desired or avoided ; 
and in the like manner with the tastes, smells, etc. The crav- 
ing or shunning will be alike in all the cases after the knowing, 
and may thus all come under the common term of feeling as an 
urgency of longing or of loathing, desiring or rejecting. The 
term feeling thus applied must have the cognition, however 
attained, as its preliminary, and necessarily the primitive fact 
for it. 

The taking {capieiis) in the capability for a cognition, becomes 
here in the feeling a taking under {sud-capiens), and the com- 
petency for such mental activity is a Siisceptibility, and will give 



THE SPECIFIC METHOD. 6 1 

forth its feeling according to the conditions of its primitive fac- 
ulty as induced by its peculiar intellectual agency. 

3. This urgency of the craving or aversion is, then, prelimi- 
nary to, and so the primitive fact for, a third stage in the 
consciousness. The urgency in the spontaneity here rises to a 
persistent energy which is able to attain the end which shall sat- 
isfy the feeling. The craving or repelling feeling thus passes 
over to an energetic Will, which is an efficient executive, and 
henceforth becomes the controlling agency in the gratification 
of the susceptibility. When exercised only in gratification of 
animal appetites, it is brute-will ; when fulfilling the ends of free 
spontaneous thinking, it is the scientific will ; and when exe- 
cuting what we have not yet considered, but shall subsequently 
see to be the imperatives of the reason, it is the spiritual will in 
liberty. In all cases it must have its appropriate susceptibility 
for its primitive fact, of which it must itself be the invariable 
successor. By its ultimate disposing, it puts and fixes in the 
consciousness the permanent character of the human personality. 

The common consciousness may have its unshaken convic- 
tions of the order of its experience, but only the exact scientific 
testing of the common experience anew will give valid authority 
for this general process of all Empirical Psychology. And such 
process through the successive steps as given in the above 
primitive facts establishes the specific method of Empirical 
Psychology in a manner that is infallible, and must be retained 
as altogether inviolable. The Method is itself a fact scientifi- 
cally tested, and thus the order of the trial of psychical experience 
is as necessary to a correct Psychology as is the vahdity of the 
constituent facts themselves. We are, therefore, prepared for a 
succinct statement of this method. 

Section III. The Specific Method. — The one Mind has 
its capability for varied modes of knowing, and as such it is the 
INTELLECT ; and under the Intellect it has its varied modes 
of feeling, and in this it is the SUSCEPTIBILITY ; and in the 



62 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

susceptibility it has its various modes of executive energy, and 
in this attainment of the ends of feeling it is WILL. 

L THE INTELLECT. 

1. The Sense. 

2. The Understanding. 

3. The Reason. 

IL THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. 

1. The Sentient. 

2. The Psychical. 

3. The Rational. 

III. THE WILL. 

1. The Executive Energy in the Sense. 

2. The Executive Energy in the Soul. 

3. The Executive Energy in the Spirit. 

4. The Completed Will in Liberty. 

IV. THE COMPLETION OF EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY 
GIVES AN OPEN DOOR TO A UNIVERSAL PHILOSOPHY. 

1. Physical Science. 

2. Psychical Science. 

3. Rational Science. 

4. Theistic Science. 



FIRST DIVISION. 



THE INTELLECT. 

The Agency Employed and Its Precise Position. 

SCIENTIFIC experience, as we have defined it, is an un- 
doubted fact. The common experience of man can be at 
any time, as in unnumbered instances it actually is, tried over 
again and tested. There is, therefore, in the common experience 
a capability different from experience. That a function should 
take note of its own operations, or that experience should specu- 
late upon itself, would be absurd. The trial of a faculty by its use 
is one thing, while the taking note of the trial, the examination 
of it, the testing it, is quite another ; and we deceive ourselves 
with very superficial thinking if we confound these two. There 
is a capability different from experience, which can examine and 
test the experience, and which demonstrates its existence by 
doing this work. This capability, as already noted, is Mind ; 
and when exercising itself in this way, it is scientific Mind. 

The experiment by which the mind tries over again and tests 
till it accurately knows a fact of experience will, like every act 
of knowledge, involve the discernment of certain limitations 
within or into which the fact is set or laid, and by which it be- 
comes defined in its parts, and its parts become comparatively 
distinguished, and all the parts become correctly connected as 
one whole. The act is thus literally an act of intelligence, — 
in, intus, and kgere, to lay within, — and the agency employed 
therein is properly termed the Intellect. 



64 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

The scientific Mind, or Intellect as we now contemplate it, 
has elevated itself above and overlooks the whole field of the 
common experience, and has the capability to take any facts or 
all the field together, and try them all over by new experiments. 
It is a spontaneous agent ; it can discriminate itself from its 
objects, and can make its own acts the objects of its subjective 
intelligence, — all which facts are as easily proved in actual ex- 
periment as is its own existence. It has already found the 
primitive facts of sensation and consciousness, and that in con- 
sciousness the three stages of knowing, feeling, and.wilHng have 
an invariable order in their succession which determines the 
specific Method of Empirical Psychology. 

We are now carefully to follow this scientific Mind through 
all its future process of scientific experiment upon common 
experience, until we find at last its entire capability for testing 
empirical facts, and by its use may scientifically reach and open 
the only door which leads from Empirical Science to a Univer- 
sal Rational Philosophy. 

The position we now take, and from which our scientific 
experiments start, is with the content in consciousness, in which 
the subject mind has just aroused itself to sufficient wakefulness 
for the apperception that both subject and object are com- 
mingled together in the light of consciousness. We here begin 
our testing experiments. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE SENSE. 

The scientific mind is fully aware that its spontaneity does 
not go out in intelligent action, save as some occasion for 
it falls in the way — ob and cado, to fall atliwart — of the 
spontaneity. And this intelligent action is the more sure and 
satisfactorily convincing in proportion as the occasion rises from 
a fortuitous occurrence to a manifest tendency or propensity in 
the same direction, and becomes a condition for the action, or 
that which gives itself together with — con and do, to give to- 
gether with — the spontaneity. When there is this conspiring 
activity of object and subject, as if the former solicited and the 
latter assented, there is not only the certainty of the mind's ac- 
tivity, but a satisfactory conviction that it is active according to 
the rule of intelligence itself, and therein is attaining valid cogni- 
tion. As the uniformity approaches universality, the confidence 
of its truth becomes unquestionable. It is in this way that the 
fascinating interest in scientific experiment is quite defensible, 
as originating in the love of truth, and as in itself a search for 
the truth on its own account. 

We shall have abundant opportunity for verifying these con- 
siderations in our further process of experimentally testing the 
old facts of common experience. Empirical Psychology will 
advance in uniformity towards universality, though no scientific 
testing by new experiment can ever compass the ultimate and 
absolute. We shall see how far it may go, and where it must 
stop and give place to the working of another faculty. 



66 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

We now proceed by careful experiment to test the process of 
Knowing in the Sense. 

Section I. Objective Construction. — The special senses 
are the touch, taste, smell, and those of hearing and seeing. 
The touch has also been distinguished into contact as in tem- 
perature, and muscular pressure as in impenetrability, thus 
giving six special inlets for the entrance of content into con- 
sciousness. Through these special senses have entered all 
invasions from without that have induced sensation and, by 
occasion of the presence of the outer object with the inner sub- 
ject, have awakened the spontaneous mind to consciousness. 
The entire common experience has possession of its facts only 
on the condition that for each fact there has been an objective 
sense-affection arousing the spontaneity to corresponding sub- 
jective activity; but all this, in the common consciousness, has 
passed by unexamined and unacknowledged, and however 
strong the conviction that there has been throughout the expe- 
rience this correspondent connection of subject and object, 
there is yet to the common mind no capability to verify or 
explain it. There must be a reconstruction of the facts by try- 
ing them over again in scientific experiment before we can have 
a safe exposition or a sound cognition of human experience. 
For such trial and testing experiment the scientific mind is 
abundantly competent, and the way is open for any requisite 
variety or repetition of new experiments in the securing a certi- 
tude so valid that all assumed question or doubt may be rea- 
sonably disregarded. Such reconstruction by new experiments 
is the only safe and sure way to an Empirical Psychology, and 
this we here commence at the very opening of the senses in 
consciousness, purposing to carry out the construction to com- 
plete sense-cognition. 

I. Attention, on one side, defines. In simple consciousness, 
which has not yet risen to self-consciousness, the subject and 
object are, as we have already noted, indiscriminate, and thus 



THE SENSE. 6/ 

uncognized. But when the scientific mind has separated itself 
from its object in the hght of self- consciousness, and then seeks 
by scientific experiment to know how this was done, it is aware 
that the first requisite in the experiment is to try over again an 
act of atientio7i. In an act of attention — ad and tendo, to 
stretch to, or over — the spontaneity stretches itself to and over 
its object, thereby shutting it completely within its own limits. 
The object may be of any variety in any sense, as a coldness or 
hardness in touch, or a redness in sight, but only as this object 
is thus attentively brooded over by the spontaneous activity, can 
it be truly known, or made to possess any determinate signifi- 
cance for the intelligent subject. The attention, as we here note 
it, is completely on one side ; turned i7i upon and not at all out 
from the object, and thus as above in touch or sight, the object 
is the single coldness or hardness, or the single redness, alone 
in its isolation. But, though determined thus as a single definite 
in its own limits, it is yet altogether unqualified aside from its 
singleness. It can be characterized by no predication, and is 
solely a this in the consciousness. As in the light it is this here, 
as neither coming in nor going out it is a this now ; but all soon 
passes away, to be succeeded by other singles, each of which 
will alike be a this here and now. In the same way there might 
come within consciousness every single fact of common experi- 
ence, though neither in nor out of consciousness has the single 
object any relation to another object. The one spontaneity 
abiding in all can thus be conscious of all, and, as the same 
subject, can say of all, my object, but this as well for one as for 
another, and without distinguishing one from another. Such 
construction in simple definition is termed I?n??iediate Beholding. 
The object in its singleness stands over against the subject face 
to face, without any medium between the two, and with no 
abiding certainty for itself. 

2. Attention, on both sides, distinguishes. The touch may 
find itself between a smoothness and roughness, and with the 



6S EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY.- 

attention stretching over either side alone there will be definition 
simply '; but if the attention turn itself over both the smooth 
and the rough, each will be defined in the consciousness ; and 
though each be single in itself, yet inasmuch as each is an object 
of the one spontaneous subject, this subject may say of both, 
they are my objects, and may at once distinguish the one from 
the other, according to the peculiarities of the two in conscious- 
ness. The smooth and rough will each be objects in the one 
sense of touch, and their distinction will be of vai^iety only and 
not of kind; but if there be a redness and a yellowness on each 
side of the spontaneity in the sense of sight, while these will also 
be distinguished in variety, yet, inasmuch as the senses of touch 
and sight are in the same spontaneous subject, that subject will 
distinguish the objects in each sense from those in the other as 
different also in kind. Thus, in the same way of attention on 
both sides of the spontaneity, all differences of kind and variety 
in sense objects may be sorted and classified exactly and com- 
pletely. Nothing is then left in single isolation, but every 
defined this has its distinctive that, each here has a there, every 
now has a then, and all facts in common experience are sepa- 
rated and sorted after their distinctly ascertained differences. 

While thus definition is effected by a one-sided attention, it 
is manifest that distinction can be accomplished only by an 
agency that broods over both sides of the limitation. The two 
sides with their differences cannot be brought into the one field 
of consciousness but by an attending agency that reaches into 
the hght which illumines both ways from the dividing process. 
The result of this process is known as a Perception. The object 
immediately beheld in its single definition is perceived only as it 
is taken th?^ough — per and capio, to take through — the defining 
and classifying process by which distinction from another object 
appears. 

3. Attention, stretched over the circuit of the se?ises, connects. 
We are making connections of objects in our sense-experience 



THE SENSE. 69 

all the while, and the common mind does this without a 
thought of the process, and, of course, without any attempt to 
verify it. But now, in our scientific inquiry, let us make a new 
experiment for testing these connections. Let the occasion be 
furnished, e.g., by a large crystal of salt. When this is taken 
under the pressure of muscular touch, the property of a hard 
impenetrabihty is at once perceived, and when the pressure has 
been spread over the entire surface, the cubic form of the crys- 
tal will be given in connection with the hardness. If the light 
falling on the cubic crystal be reflected to the eye in a scientific 
experiment, there will be the perception of a gray color taking 
the cubic form and connecting itself with the hard crystal of the 
touch in exact coincidence. If the hard colored crystal be 
stricken together with another, and the aerial reverberations 
reach the ear, there will be perceived the noisy click of the per- 
cussion put directly as a property of sound within the colored 
cubic hardness. If this, again, be seen carried to the tongue, 
there will further be perceived an acrid taste, and when all is yet 
further brought to the nose, there will, with the taste, also be a 
saline odor, and both the acrid taste and the bitter smell will be 
consciously connected with the formerly perceived properties. 
The crystal will now be recognized as hard, and cubic, and gray, 
and acrid, and with a saline smell, and a clicking sound. It has 
now gone the circuit of the attending senses, and the property 
of each having been joined respectively to the others, all are 
now compenetratively connected in the one crystal. All other 
sense objects in common experience may thus scientifically 
be connected in their properties, and only thus can any object 
of sense be made to stand in conscious perception, with all its 
properties interfused within its one form. When the attention 
thus connects different properties into one object, it is properly 
termed Observation. Each property is thus held before — ob 
and servo, to hold before — the attending subject, till the other 
properties are joined in connection with it. 



70 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

When the body touched is changed by adding to or taking 
from it somewhat, and then invariably on such change in the 
touch, a certain change also occurs through the other senses on 
presenting to them the changed object ; this invariable order of 
successive changes is also noted in sense- observation, and the 
spontaneity which connects these consequent results is as much 
conditioned thereby as it is by the uniformity of the interfused 
qualities. Uniformity in collocation, or in the order of succes- 
sion, is akeady the sohciting condition for the corresponding 
spontaneous action. 

It is quite obvious from all this that the sense of touch is a 
common basis and substantial support for the other senses, and 
that in the absence of this sense no other sense could be a sub- 
stitute for it. The found color could not be made to take and 
keep the other properties of smell, taste, etc. ; and much less 
could these other properties take and keep the color and the 
hardness. Unless there be a hard, impenetrable object for the 
touch, no connection of qualities in sense-observation would be 
possible. 

But, convenient as is the sense of muscular touch for sus- 
taining the properties given by the other senses, it is of much 
higher import that we perpetually acknowledge the fact that this 
convenient, hard impenetrability is ever but a property, and not 
an essential substance. Tlie touch no more gives the ultimate 
reason for the impenetrabihty than does the tongue for its taste 
or the sight for its color. The spontaneous attention can carry 
itself round the circuit of the senses most readily by the touch, 
but it can no more go back of the touch and tell how its prop- 
erties stand on an ultimate substance, than it can reach such an 
ultimate substance by any other of the senses. We can, in our 
sense, go no farther back than the simple fact that any two sur- 
faces in contact keep out each other ; while what makes this 
impenetrability eludes our scrutiny. All single bodies tend 
towards other bodies, and fall if unsupported, till they find a sus- 



THE SENSE. 71 

taining surface ; and as thus held no scrutiny of sense can find 
any ultimate support beneath the last surface for the bodies that 
may rest upon it. All sense-properties are thus, each alike 
respectively, to be taken as pheizomenon, and not as noumenon 
or ultimate being. Scientific experiment tries that which is 
in common experience, but can never carry itself out of expe- 
rience to test what must have been in order to experience ; 
but at its best may only bring us to the consciousness of a 
higher faculty which may legitimately interpret for us the true 
philosophy. 

As in the sense we find no ultimate substance, so in the sense 
we have conditional cause only, and can never reach to a per- 
sonal will in liberty. No sense can stand alone in its own free 
spontaneity, but all alike must have their precedent condition ; 
and while, with the condition given, the sense originates action 
of its own accord, it never does this but in accordant co-action 
with its soliciting condition. Our whole spontaneous attention 
is in alliance with outside conditions, and must wait upon them 
and act with them, and can never stand in its own independence 
and act without, much less against, them. 

So, also, the sense can only give us place and period, and 
never the unlimited Space and the immutable Time. The touch 
constructs its forms but only finds their places within the reach 
of its own movement ; the senses of smell and of sound can 
only quite vaguely apprehend distances and place ; the taste can 
have place only in the points where its solutions touch the tast- 
ing organ ; so that, were the man with only these senses to go 
round the world, he could carry with himself but a narrow belt 
of conscious observation in which place could have any recog- 
nition. Even when there is added to these senses the sense of 
vision, which can scan the distant places on the earth and in the 
heavens, its scope will still have its limit and be place only ; and 
though within it there may be the place for all the other places 
of the other senses, and it might stand for these as boundless 



72 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

space, just as the impenetrability in touch had stood for sub- 
stance to tlie other senses, still would this place for all other 
places be only a larger place which itself could not have been 
save as the illimitable Space had already been in which itself 
might also be. Just so all movements and changes in sense- 
experience have their limits of longer or shorter period, and do 
not reach the illimitable and the immutable; yet no periodic 
successions could have been but as the immutable Time in which 
they are must have already been. Science can never test the 
illimitable, the unbegun, and unending; and yet it can never 
measure substance or causation, extension or succession, with- 
out beginning in the measureless and still continuing in the 
measureless, without ever attaining the comprehension of an 
Absolute. It is good within experience, and good for nothing 
without experience. 

The feebleness of the sense is taught us in this, that while the 
scope of vision takes in the celestial luminaries far beyond the 
range of touch, we are obliged to suppose that with adequate 
locomotion we could touch every heavenly body, and yet cog- 
nize nothing below their surfaces except in their disintegration ; 
and that if such disintegration should go on to any minuteness, 
still every atom would hav^e its surface compelling every sense 
to remain forever on its outside. 

Section II. Subjective Construction and Projection. — 
Objective construction defining, distinguishing, and connecting, 
may perpetually go on unnoticed and inexplicable in common 
experience, and this may then be tried over again in scientific 
experiments, as we have now done, giving to us clear Perception 
and complete Observation of all sense objects, and then this 
knowledge may be put to use in the varied interests of practical 
life, but all this will not exhaust the field of sense-consciousness, 
nor finish the activity passing on in sense-experience. There is 
an inner world of subjective construction continually underlying 
and often projecting itself into the outer life. This inner world 



THE SENSE. 73 

is sometimes clouded with shapes which the attending agency- 
has constructed out of semblances of sensations which itself has 
simulated. Such constructions are itrxntd phantasms or halluci- 
nations. They are most often visual, though often also audible, 
and sometimes also simulate phenomena of smell and taste. To 
those by whom they are constructed, and to whom alone they 
appear, they may have every semblance of reality, and thus stories 
of spectres and apparitions are sometimes related with great 
minuteness and with every conviction of their truth on the part 
of persons who seem to be reciting thus their own experience, 
while others may have no difficulty in detecting these appear- 
ances as illusions. To persons in good health such phantasms 
never come save in dreams, or immediately before sleep, or at 
the time of waking and when half awake, while they are common 
and in some cases constant to persons in a fever, or who suffer 
from nervous visitation, or from narcotism, insanity, and epilepsy. 
That they are phantasms and no phenomena of real objects is 
sometimes recognized even by those who behold them ; but per- 
sons of weak culture or confirmed disease are often incapable 
of any such recognition. These products are often termed the 
work of Phantasie. 

But when the attending spontaneity out of impressions and 
affections which lie vague and half finished in the consciousness 
forms pictures for itself, to which it attaches no objective signifi- 
cance, these fictitious forms, capriciously or fantastically con- 
structed, are properly termed the work of the Fancy. It is the 
construction of immature perception and incomplete observa- 
tion into more or less incongruous objects, and then projecting 
these in fictitious scenes amid the realities of our common expe- 
rience. 

" When nature rests, 
Oft in her absence, mimic fancy wakes 
To imitate her, but, misjoining shapes, 
Wild work produces oft." 



74 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

Of this work of the fancy we may say : 

1. That it conforms to the invariable law of sense-construc- 
tion in that it must first find its sufficient occasion. The spon- 
taneous attention will no more stretch itself over and define its 
objects, in fancies than in realities, without its appropriate con- 
ditions. Spontaneity is not self-action independent of condi- 
tions, but in fancy these conditions are more or less unfinished 
objects^ and thus are but partial perceptions, and can be con- 
structed only into fictions of seeming reality. 

2. The subjective construction of the fancy is always modi- 
fied by the idiosyncracy of its author. Shakespeare's witch 
scene in " Macbeth " and Burns' "Tam O'Shanter" are both 
pure works of fancy, each unlike the other, and also unlike any 
other, both in their construction and scenic projection, and 
neither could have been the production of another mind than 
that which had the 'modifications of the veritable author. 

3. Scientific cultivation modifies and mostly excludes the 
fancy. Children live largely in fancy, and their daily acts and 
sports are in a great degree projections fronii their fictitious con- 
structions. The savage is also prone to fancy, illustrations of 
which abound in his supposed causes and cures of diseases, 
war-songs and dances, and superstitious fictions concerning the 
dead, and the world and its employments where the dead have 
gone. The common mind becomes less fanciful in proportion 
as it is scientifically cultivated. As perception and observation 
are made more complete, the convictions of reaHty shut out the 
illusions of fancy. And yet in the most cultivated modern com- 
munities the sway of fancy in fashion, in dress, equipage, man- 
ners and customs, is everywhere prevalent. 

4. The most cultivated fancy is still only of the sense, and 
must with the sense pass into the sphere of the reflective under- 
standing before it can reach the elevation which thought gives 
to the productive imagination. Fancy can apply none of the 
logical connections, much less the compass of reason to its con- 



THE UNDERSTANDING. 75 

structions, and can only please the sense without responsive 
thought and especially without authority from any moral impera- 
tive. It must itself be conditioned by thought and reason before 
its fairest phantoms may be allowed to guide the life or satisfy 
the hope of human experience. 

Scientific experiment may determine thus much of the con- 
structions and projections of fancy, but the experience of fancy, 
as well as that of scientific perception and observation, here 
passes out of the sense, and if it shall be thoroughly scrutinized, 
must be taken up as henceforth standing in the higher sphere 
of thought and reflection. 



CHAPTER 11. 

THE UNDERSTANDING. 

Section I. (i) Its meaning and change of attitude as a 
Faculty. The phenomena of the sense come and go, but after 
they have vanished something remains. The essential reality of 
these vanished phenomena has passed into the Memory, where 
it is held unconsciously until it is brought up again in conscious 
re-cognition. As the object cognized in sense is the content in 
the bodily organ, the object thus re-cognized is — if we may 
take a word not often used, but exactly expressive — the retent 
in the mind, or that which is retained in the mental capacity 
after what was contained in the bodily organ has disappeared. 
The content was known as a face-to-face presentation ; the retent 
is turned back to view as a representation ; the properties of 
things which we observed as collections in the sense, we now 
know through a process of re-collection ; what had passed into 
the mind's retention as memorials of scenes which, having been 
directly present, had passed out of consciousness, is now, when 



'j6 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

recalled and represented, conscious Remembrance ; what were 
sQnsQ-relalions come now to view as XhoMght-associations. We 
may sum up in a word these differences between the two pro- 
cesses by saying that the one is a knowledge wholly direct and 
the other a knowledge wholly reflective. The retent, when 
known, stands before us as if reflected and inverted in a mirror, 
the nearest events in the past being in this way the nearest as 
actually remembered. 

All this will be famihar when, by a testing experiment, we re- 
member the transactions in the sense of the preceding day. 
They go past, and drop out of the senses and are retained in 
memory as having gone by, and are then called up again in full 
remembrance, standing out before us in the connection in which 
they came to our sense-observation, only here they are inverted ; 
the first that came in to the sense-experience being now the 
farthest from us, as in our reflex contemplation of them we 
remember them in orderly succession. The successive events 
of the day came in and passed along by in order, and retreated 
more and more from us in the past, till we took them, as a reflex 
in a mirror, and re-membered them before us again, with the first 
events furthest ofl", and the last transactions of the day nearest 
to us. And just thus will it be if we call from past memory into 
present remembrance the connected events of the day before, 
they will all be an inverted reflex, standing back of the events 
of the last day ; the first events stretching the farthest back, and 
the next m order nearest to us ; and so would the entire expe- 
rience of our lives be inverted before us, if we could exactly 
remember its events in the order of their sense-observation. 
The retent in the remembered consciousness would back out 
with faces towards us, in the inverse of that by which the sense- 
content had marched into our presence. We observe and re- 
member in like succession, but in inverted order. All this any 
one can verify by his own experiments, which he can repeat at 
any time he pleases. 



THE UNDERSTANDING. 7/ 

Mere memory is not knowledge, but only such a retention of 
former things known that they may again be called up and made 
objects of study. Without memory, the mind would be incap- 
able of thought or of science. Our past experience would be a 
blank, and not only would all knowledge be limited to the field 
of the present moment, but all plans and calculations respecting 
the future would be impossible. 

While nothing is retained in the memory which has not been 
originally received through the sense-experience, there are cer- 
tain facts which render it probable that no mind ever actually 
loses anything which has been thus received. Persons resusci- 
tated from drowning or hanging have reported a sudden revela- 
tion of all their past life flashing out with distinctness and 
minuteness just before their consciousness was lost. The 
present writer is himself acquainted with an army officer who 
has had two distinct experiences of this sort, — once in early life 
when near drowning, and once in a sudden exigency in a battle. 
Pointing in the same direction are the numerous facts cited 
where persons in extreme sickness and under operations for 
injuries of the head have conversed in languages which they had 
known in youth, but had for many years seemed to have entirely 
forgotten. Persons also in the delirium of a fever have repeated 
with apparent accuracy discourses to which they had hstened 
many years previously, and of which, before the fever, they had 
no recollection. More remarkable cases still are reported where 
persons in certain abnormal states have accurately repeated long 
passages from foreign tongues which they had casually heard 
recited long before, but whose meaning they never knew. 
Whatever may be thought about arts of remembering, there 
would seem to be no art of forgetting. 

That which thus holds in remembrance all content of sense- 
observation, and abidingly stands under tht sense-constructions, 
holding these in reflective order for deliberate contemplation, 
is quite appropriately termed The Understanding. 



y8 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

2. The field of consciousness in tlie Understanding. Though 
each organ of sense has its own attending activity, and thus its 
own range — broader or narrower — of conscious construction, 
the organ of sight takes in the range of all the rest. Whatever 
object can be touched, heard, tasted, or smelled, the eye can 
see. As it can thus take within its scope the places and periods 
of all shaped objects on earth or in the heavens, it thus follows 
that within the inner capacity of the eye is found a field of con- 
sciousness for the whole common experience of humanity. And 
now an adequate testing experiment will unquestionably evince 
that, on going from the sense, it is this field of consciousness 
with its past objects which is retained in memory ; and then, 
again, that it is the reflex of this retent which is re-membered as 
the internal of the understanding, with all its places and periods 
.exactly conformed to the constructions made in the sense, ex- 
cept that as remembered in the understanding their order is 
inverted. The field of consciousness in the understanding is, 
therefore, precisely the field of consciousness in sense-observa- 
tion reflectively inverted. To the conscious understanding, 
thus, this inverted field of sense -observation is directly before 
it for its contemplation and higher cognitions. 

For these higher cognitions nothing more is needed from the 
attending agency in the senses. Its work has been already 
completed in the sense-content and its constructions. The re- 
tent of these is not now to be '' defined," " distinguished," and 
" connected," but becomes solely the object for reflective think- 
ing. Thus thought may i-ecollcct the past, and make its deduc- 
tions from the data thence scientifically attained. 

3. Cognitions from individual recollections. — Any individual 
may so have the retent of past experience reflected in remem- 
brance upon the field of his internal consciousness, that he can 
at once bring up some object or event which he holds distinct 
and prominent in his thought. Such would be a spontaneous 
act of conscious Re-collection. The man who has it may him- 



THE UNDERSTANDING. 79 

self be so sure of the verity and reality of the occurrences which 
he thus recollects, that he will not need to be very sohcitous 
about the exact place or period of their actual existence, or 
their compatibility with surrounding conditions ; he knows they 
have been in his conscious experience, and are now in his con- 
scious recollection, and thus that they must comport with places, 
periods, and circumstances that have any relationship to them. 
He may be very ready to, qualify himself under oath, and testify 
to them under the responsibihty of the pains and penalties of 
perjury, that they are the truth, the whole truth, and nothing 
but the truth, so far as he knows anything about them. 

Yet this individual strength of conviction could not be so sat- 
isfactory for other individuals ; the events must for them be 
made to stand exactly coincident with place, period, and cir- 
cumstance, and so confirmed by two or three other competent 
witnesses that the evidences of their reality shall be made un- 
questionable, and when this is done all interested individuals 
may be ready to take the life of some capital offender on the 
undoubted credit of ample testimony. 

But this certainty of individuals, however adequate for all 
purposes of the case in hand, could have little authority in the 
scientific testing, sorting, and classifying the facts of common 
experience. Individual recollection individually tested can 
never reach the claims of science when trying over again the 
facts of common experience. Individual testimony can reach 
but few of any generation, and generations themselves soon 
cease to recollect or be recollected, while common experience 
must be tested for all individuals of a generation, and for all 
generations. Only for comparatively a very few facts of uni- 
versal application, like the ordinances of day and night, the 
changing seasons, and planetary revolutions, are the facts indi- 
vidually attested so prominent and permanent that they force 
conviction of their reality upon all men of all ages. In some 
adequate way the collocations of all objects in all generations 



80 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

must be known to be so uniform, and the succession of events 
so unvarying in their universal order, as to force the conviction 
of their verity upon the reflecting and thinking minds of all the 
centuries. 

4. Cognitions in common from abstract recollections. If we 
make a careful trial, we shall see that oftentimes among the indi- 
vidual re-collections, as just above given, some objects will have 
like properties in all, and some unlike, in each; and that we can 
make another peculiar re-collection, in which we have drawn off 
the properties in common from those that differ in particular, 
and have thus attained a truly abstract re-collection. Of ten 
apples in recollection to-day, that a man may be willing to tes- 
tify under oath are the reflex remembrances of ten apples actually 
observed in a certain place and period yesterday, he may now 
abstract what is in common for all from what is peculiar to each, 
and these common properties will not only be as real as the proper 
ones that have been left out, but, taken together, the common will 
be a valid voucher for the proper ten apples yesterday actually 
observed. And still farther, a scientific experiment will test that 
there are these common properties in all apples of common ex- 
perience, no matter how variedly particular apples may differ; 
and then we have not the voucher for ten real apples merely, 
but for all real apples of all ages. The same is true for the suc- 
cessive changes in the growth of the apple ; the changes are in 
common for all, and diverse in each. The tree bears the apple, 
and the apple grows successively from the blossom to matu- 
rity, and separates from its stem and goes on to be a tree 
again ; and we gather these changes in common as we do the 
common properties in our abstract re-collections, both processes 
being equally valid and each going far beyond what any indi- 
vidual testimony can reach. 

We have here, then, a wide field for empirical science. Every 
observed object that has passed into the retent of memory, and 
been recollected in the field of the understanding conscious- 



THE UNDERSTANDING. 8 1 

ness, has its like and unlike properties with others of its fellows, 
and so all objects in common experience may be held in classi- 
fied relations through their common recollections. Such abstract 
recollections are known as Coficeplions, i.e., the products attained 
by faking together and holding in unity what is common in sim- 
ilar particularities. The common properties cannot be put in 
single objects, or the common changes in a single series ; but 
in their common conception they are as valid realities as when 
they stood in their observed collocations or ordered successions. 
They abide the tests of scientific experiment as surely in their 
re-collection as in their primitive observation. We may thus 
take these abstract conceptions and work them into understand- 
ing cognitions as readily and as validly as we have worked the 
content in sensation into definite and distinct perceptions and 
connected observations. The retent with which the under- 
standing deals is only the inverted reflex of the original sense- 
content. 

And now all this can be clearly apprehended only by care- 
fully avoiding the delusion which comes from giving to the real 
the meaning of the same. The understanding cannot have self- 
sameness, but only the reflex of former observation. The self- 
same particulars in their differences have gone out of observa- 
tion, and into the past, and they can never come back into the 
present, except as recollected in the understanding conscious- 
ness, and when thus re-collected they are obviously not the self- 
same particulars in their differences, nor even as they actually 
were in the self-same place and period. All that the understand- 
ing can do in gaining the same is to re-collect the real from some 
sure repository. Thus the four Evangelists have given each his 
own particulars of the scene of the crucifixion, but the only way 
in which we can now re-collect the real persons and transactions 
in this scene is by a conception which leaves out the individual 
differences in which Jesus or Judas or Herod or the High Priest, 
or the events of the Sanhedrim, or the denial of Peter might be 



82 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

regarded by us or by others, and which takes in only what is 
common to us and to all men. The common is indeed the 
only real for all, while the self-same differences among particu- 
lars are gone by forever. The one reflex of the real as given in 
the abstract conception of the common properties and changes 
of the scene is the only sa7ne crucifixion the world can ever 
again re-cognize. The common is for the reflex thinking of the 
world the only real and the only same crucifixion of the world's 
only Saviour ; and so alike for every event in history, sacred or 
profane. These real properties in common make the only con- 
dition which may invite and guide the spontaneous understand- 
ing to any work of re-collecting past realities. 

Section II. Outlines of Empirical Logic. — This faculty of 
the understanding, by the conceptions which it thus re-collects, 
opens the door for the further process of scientifically testing 
the common experience in thinking, and so attains an entrance 
into the entire department of Einpirical Logic. It is entirely 
practicable to trace thoroughly the work of the understanding in 
this department, but to do so will require very close attention. 

Logic has been called the science of thought, but is, more 
exactly, an exposition of the process of thought. Thought is 
the subjecting of one conception to, or the shutting of one con- 
ception within, another ; and Logic points out the way by which 
this is done. We are now to follow this way, and by careful 
experiment make scientific test of its value. 

A conception is the taking together of the properties in com- 
^non of similar particulars ; and as thus far we have been all 
along dealing with the outer that invades the senses, and the 
inner that receives and constructs the outer, — which two have 
been made to stand to us as object and subject, — so all our 
conceptions, which we are now to try over again, will be of one 
or the other of these. This will give to our Logic two divisions, 
the one of which will relate to the outer matter, and the other 
to the inner spontaneous mover, or to Matter as mechanical 



THE UNDERSTANDING. 83 

forces, and to Life as conditioned spontaneities. In this we have 
the two grand divisions in physical science, of the inorganic or 
mineral kingdom on the one hand, and on the other the organic 
kingdom, with its sub-realms of the vegetable and animal species 
and genera. We shall thus need to consider : — 
I. The Logic of the Mechanical Forces. 

II. The Logic of Living Spontaneities. 

Our conceptions of mechanical forces will also be twofold, as 
we take together the similar properties as found in fixed collo- 
cations, or those re-collected in changing successions. This 
will give to our Logic of the Mechanical Forces two parts : (i) 
The Logic of Permanent Conceptions; (2) The Logic of 
Changing Conceptions. 

There are thus three quite distinct modes of conceiving and 
thinking, all of which must be distinctly considered if we would 
exhaust all the capabilities of the human understanding. We 
shall at the outset of each mode need to note the conceptions 
themselves as they are distinguished from each other, and then 
see how these distinctive conceptions are made the basis for 
their logical system. We shall make the statements of these 
distinctions as concisely as we can, attempting to give only what 
the common properties in fact are, leaving altogether to a later 
Philosophy the exposition of how they must be. 

1. Logic of Mechanical Force. — First Part : Logic of 
Permanent Conceptions. 

I. The Properties in common of Matter as abstractly con- 
ceived. — We will give these simply as scientific experiments find 
them, and in what may be considered as their natural order of 
re- collection. They will show us the only scientific conceptions 
we have of matter. 

Gravity : All matter has its pull inwards to the centre from 
indefinite distances beyond the surface of its own body ; and 
thus all material bodies tend towards each other. 

Levity : Heat or light pushes outward indefinitely from a cen- 



84 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

tre, and thus tends to lift and lighten the pressure of gravity 
and send material bodies apart from each other. It is the exact 
antithesis of gravity. Heat is in all material bodies ; the cold- 
est congelation and the hardest crystalhzation having perhaps, 
in their solidifying, retained a portion of the heat which was 
in the fluid body at the point where hquefaction ceased and 
solidity began. That heat yet remains in sufficient force to 
induce vapor, even when the congelation has fallen quite below 
zero. All increase of heat in material bodies elevates and 
expands their matter, and so all material bodies have both their 
gravity and levity. 

Motion : An excess of either gravity or levity in one above 
the other, induces motion in the direction in which the excess 
is working. 

Inertia : Motion in an unresisting medium is incessant and 
uniform if unmolested ; and when by any interference the excess 
is balanced, the motion ceases, and the body, equally resisted 
and resisting, is at rest. Matter neither originates nor modifies 
- its own motion ; and its inability to do this is called its Inertia. 

Magnetism : Scientific experiment has learned to form an 
artificial magnet. It takes a mass of soft iron of convenient 
shape for its use, and winds a coil of metaUic wire around its 
mid-plane, and then continues the circuits on each side of the 
mid-plane in contrary directions each from each outwards to 
the extremities of the soft-iron body, thus making the whole coil 
to be an opposite-handed helix on the surface of the iron mass. 
This indicates how the phenomenal push and pull of the induced 
magnet will be when an electric current shall have been passed 
through the heHcal circuit. The uniform facts are, that the soft- 
iron magnet pushes each way from its neutral mid-plane with 
increasing intensity up to its polar extremities, thus distinguish- 
ing the polar extremities by their contrary approaches, as austral 
and boreal. And then the further uniform facts are, that hke 
poles set over against each other push themselves apart, and 



THE UNDERSTANDING. 85 

unilke poles pull themselves together ; and these uniform facts 
of push and pull are laws of ma^etic polarity. The neutral 
mid-point and its opposite poles, in a natural magnet, constitute 
the one magnetic body ; but if that body be broken in parts, 
each fragment will be at once a complete magnet. 

Electricity : Careful experiment has found that certain mate- 
rial bodies of distinctive substances, as resinous and vitreous, 
when rubbed together at their surfaces, excite in each a capa- 
bility of driving and drawing in opposite directions one from the 
other, which is known as Electricity. In reference to the Earth 
as a natural magnet, the vitreous will tend toward the boreal 
pole, and will be positive, while the resinous will tend toward the 
austral and check a return from the boreal pole, and will thus 
be negative ; and the two kinds of electricity will ever manifest 
their distinctive phenomena from whatever substances the sur- 
face-friction may attain the driving and drawing, or repelling 
and attracting. 

If, then, the electric current be applied to the helical circuits 
about the soft-iron mass, as in the arrangement for an artificial 
magnet, the positive will take its side from the mid-plane and 
make a boreal hemisphere, and the negative its opposite side and 
contrary direction and make an austral hemisphere with its con- 
trary current. The soft- iron mass, having no coercive force, will 
manifest its polarities only as the electric induction is present, 
and this will come and go with the tension and explosion of the 
electric charges ; and therefore an electrical artificial magnet 
can have little practical utility, but in this way the specific phe- 
nomena of magnetic and electric activity and their mutual rela- 
tions of polarity are fully disclosed. The facts are uniform and 
their successions invariable, and science has in this its law, 
though it cannot go behind the facts and get their adequate 
causality or sufficient reason. 

Galvanism : Here, again, careful experiment gets the mani- 
festation of peculiar polarities. Alternate plates of copper and 



86 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

zinc placed in a solvent medium give out distinctive polar ten- 
dencies on opposite sides and in contrary directions, and from 
the continuous solution the polar tension is uninterrupted through 
long periods. Their polarities accord with those of magnetism 
and electricity, and the galvanic current sent into the helical cir- 
cuit about the soft-iron mass makes an abiding induction of 
magnetic phenomena. The artificial magnet is, during the in- 
duction, practically to all intents as a natural magnet ; and while 
galvanism thus best subserves the ends of utility in many ways, 
it also opens to scientific experiment a direct connection of 
magnetism with chemism. 

The Chemical Pj'ocess : Galvanism connects magnetism with 
chemism and very considerably enlarges the connecting circuit. 
The alternate plates of copper and zinc in a solvent medium 
induce the magnetic polarities, which in their oxydation and 'oxy- 
genation give the gases which become the acids and alkalies 
which combine at length in a natural salt. This, by a farther 
process of decomposing and recombining through the action of 
natural affinities, passes on till it finally rests in quite a different 
state of combination from that in which the process was com- 
menced through the action of the solvent with the metallic 
plates. Such is the chemical process. It is not a circuit which 
comes round at the end again to its beginning, but the end is 
quite other than the beginning. The chemical process cannot 
reproduce itself, and cannot be revived and continued but by 
beginning anew with the galvanic polarities. It just reaches the 
limit of vitahty, but never goes over in digestion and assimilation 
to a continual process of assimilation and reproducing. 

The Understanding, with all its experiments, gets and works 
with the reflex facts from sense alone, and thus deductively only, 
and can never get before the experience and tell whence and why 
these empirical facts have thus come into human consciousness. 

2. The valid reality of these abstract conceptions. These 
conceptions have no more and no less reality than belongs to 



THE UNDERSTANDING. 8/ 

the original sense -observation. The conceptions are but the 
reflex of what has been observed in the sense. In sense-con- 
struction we have aheady seen that everything depends upon 
the touch. What we see, hear, taste, or smell, we apprehend 
only as connected with something which can be handled. 
Though our sight extends far beyond our actual touch, and is 
the most comprehensive of all our senses, what we see is taken 
by us as if it could be touched ; and when the most distant star 
becomes an object of our vision, it is visible only as what, if 
opportunity were given, would furnish resistance to touch. All 
our abstract conceptions thus being taken from sense-observa- 
tions which rest upon the touch, it is the properties of the touch 
which give stability to the thinnest as truly as to the most sohd 
of sensible objects, and which make a rainbow or a perfume as 
real as a mountain or a continent. What we touch we put, in 
our sense-constructions, under the colors we see and the odors 
we smell, although the hard surfaces of the touch are just as 
phenomenal as the rainbow colors and perfume smells. These 
hardnesses, these muscular resistances, are our most satisfactory 
vouchers for the real in the sense and the reflex of the real in 
the understanding ; and it is these which have been re-collected 
and taken together as constituting the common conceptions of 
the matters which lie at the basis of our terrene experience. 

And these abstract conceptions may be carried to much thin- 
ner abstractions and still retain their unweakened hold on 
substantial reality. When like properties of different individuals 
are taken together, the conception is that of a real species. But 
the several like species have also as well their common properties 
held really in veritable observation and reflex recollection, and 
these as generic for the species are as valid reahties for the geiuis, 
as the common properties of the individuals had been for the 
species. This may well go on through higher abstractions to the 
last generic film that superficially covers and encloses all shall be 
abstracted ; but even that shred will still be the real extent for 



88 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

which alone all and only the excluded realities can be made the 
content. The thinnest real abstraction is still the real possessor 
and voucher for all subordinate realities. 

It is just on this certitude that we have the distinctive terms 
for abstract conceptions. The conception, more or less abstract, 
which is the reflex recollection of an actual past observation, is 
made at once identical with the observed reality, and is known 
as an Identical coriception. The properties it holds in common 
stand the same in the thought as they did in the sense-observa- 
tion. The conception which should be found not thus standing 
in the thought as in the sense, is a Contradictory conceptio7i. 
The conception which has any property in opposition to such 
observed reahty, is a Contrary conception. And the conception, 
which in any way varies from the observed reality, is a Different 
conception. Identity is allowed only to substantial scientific 
reality. 

And now these abstract but real conceptions establish and 
give authority to 'Cvi^five following logical Laws of Thought. 

1 . The Law of Identity : That all Affirmation rest ofi the 
scientific test, that what is affirmed of the conception be the same 
in the reflection as that which has passed out from observation. 

2. The Law of Contradiction : That all Negation squarely 
co7itradicts the allegation made in the affirmation. 

3. The Law of the Excluded Middle : That there be 
allowed no mid reality between the Identical a7id the Contradic- 
tory. 

4. The Law of Adequate Ground : That all logical deduction 
and conclusion be sustained by a sifficient datum from a tried 
Experience. This Ground is either the testing Experiment 
itself, or its direct consequence. 

5. The Law of the Indeterminate : That an affirmation or 
contradiction of a co?itrary cofiception be not taken as an ultimate 
certainty. 

All conceptions of difference between particulars were disre- 



THE UNDERSTANDING. . 89 

garded in the first taking together, and of course may be passed 
over in all subsequent use of the conception. All unsettled 
disagreements between Affirmations and Negations must be 
referred to a further more careful and thorough experiment, and 
meantime the point in controversy must be held to be as yet 
Indeterminate. All logical questions may thus be set at rest for 
the present, if not finally. 

3. Judgment, and valid reality of the Categories. When any 
one of the properties which are taken together in any one of 
these permanent conceptions is separated from the rest, and 
is then subjected to the conception, there is a judgment. A 
judgment expressed in words is a proposition. In the proposi- 
tion the conception is the subject, the property subjected thereto 
is the predicate, and the connecting verb is the copula. Judg- 
ments thus made are of four kinds, with each its three varieties, 
making thus, in the mode of Logic we are now considering, 
twelve possible judgments, with twelve possible predicates or 
These are as follows : — 

QUALITY. QUANTITY. RELATION. MODE. 

Affi,r7native. Alanifold. Categorical. Possible. 

Negative. Particular. Hypothetical. Probable. 

Determinate. Conjoint. Disjunctive. Infallible. 

The Quality shows wherein the property qualifies the concep- 
tion, and the three varieties show the certitude of its realization. 
The Quantity shows the amount of qualification, and the vari- 
eties show the relative clearness and completeness of the 
adjudged qualification. The Relation explains the kind of 
connection the conception bears to its properties, and the vari- 
eties specify the intimacy of the relation. The Mode exposes 
the intrinsic value of the Judgment, and the varieties give the 
progressive grades in their sterling worth. 

We here go through a short though sufficient statement of 
each Category for all purposes of direction in trying over 



90 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

common experience by careful consideration of appropriate 
examples. 

Quality. The reality of qualification which the alleged prop- 
erty gives to the conception, and the manner of its expression 
in the formal varieties, may have its fair illustration in following 
out, as a given example, the judgment that "Heat expands all 
bodies." This, when put in the first variety as a positive affirma- 
tion, may readily be met in the second variety by a square 
contradiction, since it may be averred that congelation and 
crystallization expand in becoming colder. But to this the 
affirmative may reply, that additional heat went into the fluid at 
the point of liquefaction, and has since been fixed in it as the 
" latent heat of fusion " ; that at precisely the point of solidify- 
ing, this heat escapes with an elastic spring, which shoots out 
the crystal spicules, as in the snow-flake and on the wet window- 
pane ; that these spicules in congelation, like the leaves in 
crystallization, make up the body not in full solidity, but with 
porous interstices, giving translucency to the mass, and leaving 
it floating on the as yet unchanged fluid ; in a word, the cool- 
ing has condensed the needles and the crystal leaves, but the 
heat has sent them out with its partitions of ethereal levity. If 
full scientific experiment test this as uniform fact, then may we 
change the second formal variety to a negation of the negative, 
and not a contradiction. Just as, with the consent of all, we 
might at first have said in the affirmative, " Heat expands all 
metals," and then made the negation to be: "Heat does not 
^z^Z-expand all metals " ; so now we may as well affirmatively 
say, "Heat expands all bodies," and negatively, "Heat does not 
;z^/-expand all bodies." It is the double nega.tive equal to an 
affirmative ; as when, having illusively said to the tyro in logic, 
"It rains or it does not rain; it does not rain, therefore it 
rains," — we then put the formal negative correctly, "It does 
not not-rain ; therefore it rains." So, as in all cases of tried 
identity, we here put the correct formula : — 



THE UNDERSTAKDDJG. qI 

Affirmative : Heat expands all bodies ; 

Negative : Heat does not /^^/-expand any body ; 

Determinate : Heat is everywhere expansive. 

Quantity. The example may here be taken in the very 
instance we have been testing, in the properties in common 
found in the material world, and we say : — 

Manifold : The material world has manifold qualities ; 

Particular : The material world has Gravity, Levity, Inertia, 
etc., etc. ; 

Conjunct : The material world has all its qualities conjoined 
in identity with itself. 

The first variety, though true, is too confused and miscella- 
neous to be satisfactory. The second variety, also true and 
truly sorted in its particulars of Matter, Heat or Light, Magne- 
tism, etc., is yet too diffuse and distractive in its severalty to 
make a satisfactory judgment. While the third variety gathers 
all properties in common, conjunct with the conception itself, 
and thus nullifies all severalty in complete identity, and satisfies 
thus the recollecting activity as having nothing further to accom- 
plish. 

Relation. The first variety, just as in the first category of 
Quality, takes each property in common as affirmatively related 
to the conception, negating any other relation, and so determin- 
ing the relationship of subject and predicate for each. The 
second variety finds and tests the uniform condition, and thus 
the true relation, through the tried experience. The third vari- 
ety takes the identical and the contradictory together, and affirms 
that, while there can be no middle third, there must be the one 
relation through the one real condition. 

Mode. The following may be taken as a full illustration : — 

Possible : It is possible this man may die on the longest day 
of the year. 

Probable : It is probable he will die on some other day in 
the year. 



92 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

Infallible : If he die on the day of the summer solstice, it will 
be on the longest day of the year. 

The categories, as thus expounded, give their value and valid- 
ity to all Judgments, and then these Judgments pass over into 
Syllogisms. 

A syllogism is the universal form or process of drawing con- 
clusions. As the conception is identical with all its properties 
in common, it follows that, in their relations, what is true of all 
is also true of each particular. On this common basis arises 
the formal arrangement of the syllogism. The Judgment, more 
or less general, is put in formal statement, and is known as the 
Major Premise of the syllogism. Then follows the statement 
that some particular is included in the general judgment, which 
is known as the Minor Preuiise. Then follows a formal deduc- 
tion that the predicate of the Major belongs also to the particular 
in the Minor Premise, which is the last proposition of the 
syllogism, and is known as the Conclusion. Since abstract 
conceptions grow in extent as they diminish in their content, it 
follows that the thinner the abstraction so much broader is 
the generalization ; and thus the syllogism is comprehensive in 
its conclusion according to the abstract generality of its first 
premise. 

The first relation in a Judgment is the Categorical, wherein 
any one of the particulars taken together in a conception is 
directly predicated of the conception itself. A syllogism of this 
relation would have the following formal arrangement : — 

First Premise : All matter is moveable ; 

Second Premise : This body is matter ; 

Conclusion : This body is moveable. 

The next relation is the Hypothetical, wherein the particular 
can only be predicated of the conception through the medium 
of a condition, and so stands on the ground that the condition 
is really given in scientific experiment. Till this hypothesis be 
settled no affirmation as first premise can be made. The fol- 



THE UNDERSTANDING. 93 

lowing would be the formal arrangement of a syllogism of this 
relation : — 

Matter moves on condition of unequal libration j 

This body has unequal libration ; 

Therefore, this body moves. 

The third relation is the Disjunctive, wherein between two 
particulars no medium of reconcihation is possible, and one or 
the other must be predicated of the conception. The form of 
a syllogism of this relation is as follows : — 

Matter rests or moves according as it is equilibrate or is not 
equilibrate ; 

This body is not equilibrate ; 

Therefore, it moves ; 
or, 

This body is equilibrate ; 

Therefore, it rests. 

Here we may close up the outline of the First Part of the 
Logic of Mechanical- Force. It rests on tried experience, and 
thus stops wholly within experience. It is solely deductive, and 
must find its first premise in a tested fact of experience standing 
in uniform collocation and order with all experience, and then all 
deduction logically from such fact is as valid as human experi- 
ence itself. But for the test of experience itself it has no capa- 
bility. There is an assumed Inductive Logic ; viz., an induction 
of conspiring facts, so many and so carefully tested that they 
may safely be taken as sufficiently broad and clear to say that in 
them we have found the order of all experience ; from them we 
may conclude whatever must have been and must hereafter be 
the unbroken order of the collocation of all things and inception 
of all events. But with such assumption of universahty, even 
this is no proper Inductive Science. It is, bating the assump- 
tion of universality, the very logic we have been following ; viz., 
the trying over of the old common experience by new scientific 
experiments ; but we do not thus get beyond empirical fact, and 



94 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

cannot induce any adequate cause or sufficient reason antece- 
dent to and in order that the fact should so have been. We at 
most know what experience gives us ; but we cannot extort from 
experience what it is that has given experience to us. 

Second Part : The Logic of Changing Conceptions. — The 
Logic of Permanent Conceptions is an iron frame taking in and 
holding all its judgments in perpetuated immutability. The 
Law of the Excluded Middle shuts out all intercommunication 
between the same and different, and the one cannot transfuse 
itself into or through the other. A shrub is not a tree, nor a 
green apple a ripe one ; and the logic of Permanent conceptions 
could not allow either one of these to pass into the others. And 
yet in actual experience there are continual mutations, and 
prominent conceptions are frequently passing away and others 
of very different properties rise up in their place. A shrub 
becomes a tree, a child a man, etc. These mutable conceptions 
are as invariable in their order of succession as the permanent 
conceptions are in their uniformity of collocations, and they are 
ruled by as authoritative logical laws as those which keep 
permanent the former ; and their categories are held in consis- 
tency by a logical sway as legitimate as those in the previous 
system. The test of scientific experiments is as readily and 
certainly appHcable in this latter system as in the one just now 
outlined ; and we may make an outline of this as concise, and 
still as clear and convincing, as we trust has been done in that, 
though requiring a considerably modified course of reflective 
recollections. It is to be noted as one of the prominent pecu- 
liarities of these changing conceptions, that while they permit 
themselves to pass into each other, and even solicitously seek the 
introduction, yet is the entire inter-communion and inter-change 
one of constant conflict and unrelenting antagonism. They 
mutually invite and yet persistently repel each other's advances. 

The attitude we now assume to the field of the understanding 
consciousness, is that which has the remembered plan of past ex- 



THE UNDERSTANDING. 95 

perience in place and period in full reflection to our view, so that 
we may see how the process of actual changes has successively 
gone on. We do not now, as in the previous logic, abstract the 
common from the different, and thus make a more general con- 
ception ; but, as we shall see, we retain the concrete through all 
the changes, and then determine for it all its possible relations. 
This mode goes through the categories of the Hegelian Logic, 
but gets the changes in the process as tested in reality by scien- 
tific experiment, and not as left in empty ideal phases. 

The prime mechanical existences are matter and light, the 
qualities of which are respectively gravity and levity, either of 
which might be taken as the starting-point in our logical process ; 
but as levity pushes outward, and is thus the prime invader, we 
make that an assumed first quality in the logical movement. 
As qualifying vision, levity is light ; but as qualifying touch, levity 
is heat ; and it is with only these two senses that the quality of 
levity can have any direct concern, since neither as light nor as 
heat, can either taste, smell, or hearing be at all modified by it. 
As invading the organ of sight, it qualifies the color ; and as 
invading the organ of touch, it quahfies the temperature ; but in 
both alike the action is a direct movement outward from a 
common mid-point. We now recollect this from our common 
experience, and take it as heat in the sense of touch, with the 
adequate test of its reality by ample scientific experiment, and 
hold it as opening to the determination of the first logical cate- 
gory : — 

Quality. This real heat, as here recollected from past experi- 
ence, is yet taken singly in its own isolation, and stands alone by 
and for itself, and its conception as quality is that which all 
scientific experiment will confirm as valid ; viz., that wherever 
found in any experience, it radiates out from a mid-point direct 
on all sides. In its own nature, thus, in every empirical condi- 
tion amid material gravities, it must find that its expulses are 
free to move in accordance with the gravitating impulses, and 



96 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

are checked when running counter to these. It must therefore 
be stopped and hmited by surrounding gravities. The heat we 
abstract in conception from common experience, and when 
thus made to stand in isolation for itself, it will, in the whole 
reflex of the understanding consciousness, be repeatedly checked 
and Hmited in its expulses by outlying gravities, and thus it 
stands no longer per se, but must needs become also a modifying 
quality for others. No heat quality in common experience will 
push outward alone, but will be repeatedly put in limitation by 
others. This scientific law for heat makes itself pass perpetu- 
ally from the category of single Quality, and become in its own 
movement a resident in the higher category of 

Quantity. Quantity when limited is a quantum, and these 
quanta may be of any number. When the quantity passes over 
its own border to a further limit, it becomes an extensive quan- 
tum, the quantum, beginning at the border and stopping at the 
limit, thus standing between the limits as an extensive quantity. 
But quantity may pass its limit and enter another extensive 
quantum, — as heat passes its border through the limit and 
within the area of another quantum, — and such invasion of an- 
other quantum is an intensive quantity. Such intensive quantity 
diffusing itself through the area is reckoned by degrees as so 
much intensity ; and these limits by degrees are themselves all 
included in their numbers, the count including all the degrees 
as they augment the intensive quantum. The intensive quantum 
is specific inasmuch as it modifies and characterizes the entire 
extensive quantum it invades. 

The intensive quantum, modifying the extensive proportional 
to its degree of intensity, takes back again its old standing in the 
category of Quality, and has a qualifying ratio as its intensity 
increases within the extensive quantum. Thus, a quantum of 
heat invades a material body, qualifying the body as its intensity 
augments, up to the point of liquefaction, which though differ- 
ing in different material substances, is yet a specific degree 



THE UNDERSTANDING. 9/ 

respectively for each substance. Thus, the limit between con- 
gelation and liquefaction in water is at 32° Fahr. above o ; while 
for mercury it is at 40° below o. This qualitative point as limit 
between solidity and liquidity brings us to another category 
known as 

Measure. Measure is the limit between the old conception, 
which has been continually changing, and the new conception 
about to be introduced, which, in the example now contemplated, 
is the conception of congelation and fluidity. In approaching 
the limit, the changes are gradual and imperceptible up to the 
measure, and beyond the measure the fluidity gradually becomes 
complete ; but on and in the limit the turn is made, on one side 
of which is congelation, and on the other fluidity, as the changing 
process goes on by the incoming heat, till the entire quantum 
has passed from the former to the latter state. Scientific experi- 
ment finds that a given degree of heat, known as latent " heat 
of fusion," has been fixed in the liquid, thereby perpetuating its 
fluidity. And' the still further application of more heat to this 
dissolved congelation, now water, makes new changes to pass on 
in it gradually towards a further measure for the water, as before 
for the ice ; and then on and in this new measure the water 
changes to vapor, with its fixed degree of heat to keep up its 
volatility, known as the latent "heat of vapor." In either the 
state of vapor or water the heat may be withdrawn and the 
changes then flow backward through the same measures reversed. 
Most mineral solids have their measure on and in which they 
become fluid, and other matters have their changes carrying 
them out of their old into new conceptions, — like the pressed 
grape whose juices in fermentation pass their successive sacha- 
rine, vinous, and acetous stages, and which do not admit of a 
reverse process. So, also, the chemical process passes its chang- 
ing stages of acids and alkalies into neutral salt composition, 
which then becomes changed in decomposition by elective affin- 
ities wherein the circuit closes. 



98 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

All these processes of mechanical changes into other concep- 
tions over their measures may be tested by accurate scientific 
experiments ; and while each has its order of succession, they all 
without exception soon come to their ultimate conversion, and 
never are found to enter upon a continually living assimilation 
and generating reproduction. But with all these conversions of 
conceptions over the measures, there is ever the transmission 
of somewhat through the measures, that abides in all changes, 
and with this abiding somewhat the process passes to the cate- 
gory of 

Essence. Essence is the concrete basis of any material body 
made up by the combination of its ultimate elements. It is 
found only by careful scientific experiment. Thus, in our 
example of congelation and fluidity, the basis of water is found 
in its constituent elements of oxygen and hydrogen, which, 
when deprived of its latent " heat of fusion," stands back of its 
measure as congelation, with these ultimate elements the more 
purely crystallized as the heat is withdrawn. In all cases the 
one basis continues through all changes and all measures. The 
ultimate elements are neutralized in their combination, and thus 
pass from sense-observation and can be recognized only as 
thought in the understanding ; and thus this category of essence 
is purely a matter for the understanding-consciousness, where 
in reflection it can be traced through all its inner Relations 
to its phenomenal exhibitions. This brings us to the farther 
and final category of 

Relation : i. Relatio7t of substance and attributes. The 
common essence is perpetuated through all the measures ; but, 
after the first measure, it receives the additional latent heat of 
fusion, and, after the second measure, the added latent heat of 
vapor, by which in each case the essence is changed to a still 
unseen though a different substance, passing first from ice and 
its properties to water and its properties, and then to vapor and 
its properties. Where science can only more obscurely fix the 



THE UNDERSTANDING. 99 

latent interposed quantity, as in the changes of fermentation, we 
let the essence remain as permanent substance with only a latent 
variety of state ; as the same essential grape-juice has its saccha- 
rine, vinous, and acetic states with their respective attributes, the 
like substances or states in all cases having the like attributes. 

2. Relation of cause and effect. The essence remaining the 
same and hidden, the more or less revealed quality applied to 
it is taken as cause and the subsequent change as effect. Thus 
the negation of heat, viz.^ cold, is cause for congelation ; the 
degree of heat of fusion is cause for liquefaction, and heat, or 
some more secret quality, is cause for the stag-es of fermenta- 
tion. For the understanding an invariable proximate antece- 
dent to the sequence suffices for cause, without an insight to the 
source of efficiency. 

3. Relation of action and reaction. Careful experiment 
finds matter as gravity, and heat as levity, each acting on and 
against the other, and if the gravity overwork the heat, the 
latter is excluded and the solid matter fills its own place as 
phenomenally a plenum ; but if the levity overwork the matter, 
the latter is excluded, and the diffused heat leaves its place as 
phenomenally a vacuum. Or again, if the matter and heat 
work together equally, the like careful experiment evinces that 
ultimately the matter and heat equilibrate in their action and 
reaction and stand together at rest, just as hopeless of any 
future movement and change in, themselves as in the equal 
action and reaction of counter material gravitation. The process 
of changing conceptions thus soon comes to a termination, 
and the fluid water either refrigerates to a dark crystal, impene- 
trable to any sense, or it goes out in a vaporous mist too thin 
for any perception. 

Both the logic of permanent and that of changing concep- 
tions thus utterly fail to compass common experience ; the 
former abstracting conceptions too thin for thought to use, and 
the latter either petrifying or wholly exhaling. We must find 
a spontaneity whose logic can be both abiding and changing. 



lOO EMPIRICAL PYSCHOLOGY. 

II. The Logic of Living Spontaneities. — We have found 
all that the Logic of Mechanical Force can do to help the 
understanding in connecting the common experience into one 
consistent system j and we now know by scientific experimental 
testing, that it can be made to subserve such purpose no 
further than to set material bodies in uniform collocation, and 
give to them one order of invariable succession. But if the 
attainment of matter in uniform order of place and invariable 
order of successive rearrangements in period, in accordance 
with that of experience, were logically regulated, this would 
comprehend the facts of the material world alone, leaving all 
facts of spontaneous life and mind with no logical regulation. 
We have scientifically attained active spontaneities everywhere 
interworking with material gravities and levities, making in fact 
quite the largest and most important of the world's experience, 
and these therefore should be made to stand in logical order 
uniformly and invariably with the phenomena of matter. Since 
they are facts of experience they must be comprehended in the 
logical system of experience ; and still further, as we now see 
that the understanding itself is a spontaneous agent, it cannot 
dispense with its own agency, both as subject and object, in 
the conceptions, judgments, and categories it is systematically 
arranging. There needs must be a full acknowledgment of 
the capabilities and activities of spontaneity, and we must now 
carefully note what the conceptions of a spontaneous agency 
are ; in other words, we must carefully inquire what such an 
agency can do to help out the understanding in its work of 
bringing all facts of experience into systematic unity. 

T. Whaf are the capabilities of spontaneous activity? — We 
have first attained it in its very highest form of empirical mani- 
festation, as it elevated itself above common experience, and set 
itself intrepidly to the task of testing common experience by its 
own new and better applied experiments. Its first test in know- 
ing was, that the primitive step in sense perception and observa- 



THE UNDERSTANDING. lOI 

tion had the precedent condition of an outer invasion of the organ, 
and all through sense-attention and understanding-recollection, 
spontaneous action has been thoroughly correspondent to the 
objective impression. Material object and spontaneous subject 
never manifest themselves separately and independently, but 
ever as correspondent and complemental. They are co-effi- 
cient parts in a whole, and neither can be a whole by itself, and 
so the conception of spontaneous action involves the taking with 
the act the conditioning solicitation also. This complemental 
conception of spontaneous activity, taken in its highest form of 
attending or reflecting, — in which was our earliest tried experi- 
ment of it, — is our best guide and example to show us what its 
lowest and most primitive manifestation, in organic productions, 
must be. In sense-attention and understanding-reflection we 
have ever found the working of mind to be after one invariable 
order ; viz. : it, firstly, takes within its reception elements for its 
cognitions together in their manifoldness, .as a promiscuous 
mass ; it, secondly, distributes them separately and severally into 
sorted classification ; and, thirdly, it puts aU classes intelligibly 
in unity within itself. It is then a safe anticipation that we shall 
find incipient spontaneity, as instinctive life, working after the 
same order. 

2. IV/iaf, then, is Life, and its first order of working ? — The 
prime work of life is the buflding up of its own organism, and it 
begins with the vegetable body, taking for it the constituent ele- 
ments from the earth and infusing itself into them. The shortest 
definition of life thus is, the capability to give sponta^ieity to mat- 
ter ; and, inasmuch as increased heat is demanded for the work, 
it may be added to the definition that it is through the medium 
of heat. Gravity, thus, is made spontaneous through levity, 
and close scientific experiment gets the exact order of the pro- 
cess. Passing the order of cryptogams which prolong the old 
plant through spores or buds without sex-distinction, we have in 
sex-generation sperm given and received, and a complete ovum 



I02 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

or germ formed in which the living movement of a new indi- 
vidual begins and passes on in successive cell-constructions. 
In ordinary chemistry binary equivalents are put in complete 
combination, but in organic chemistry we have ternary and 
quaternary combinations consisting exclusively of the following 
peculiar primitive substances ; viz., carbon among the most 
insoluble, oxygen and hydrogen among those most in affinity, 
and nitrogen, when a fourth element is used, among the most 
volatile of all substances. Other substances supplement these, 
but only these completely combine in connection with the 
requisitely augmented heat. 

Here then are the fitting conditions for the operating of liv- 
ing spontaneity precisely similar in their appropriation to those 
already so fully given in the working of intellectual spontaneity. 
The spontaneity of life only awaits the presence of the requisite 
condition, the first of which is the need to get the wanted gravi- 
tating matters which are promiscuously lying about. The me- 
dium needed is the increased internal heat inviting the sponta- 
neity to take its expulsive energy, and go out in it to the gravity 
wanted, and then come back again in the impulsive energy of 
the gravity selected. The exactly appropriate conditions secure 
the living alternation, and the assimilating process of making, 
mending, or maturing its own organism is fairly begun, and may 
indefinitely be prolonged. The living spontaneity ascertained, 
we legitimately come 

3. To the logical verity and order of its categories. — Both 
sides of the Mechanical Logic have left us incapable of further 
progress by their empty abstractions and balanced re-agencies. 
But we now have the scientifically tested spontaneous Mind, and 
its exactly corresponding spontaneity of Life, and can thus have 
a Logic of Spontaneity. 

A direct evolving of life from matter science has never found 
in any experiment. Equivocal generation, or descent from 
mechanical force as truly as from sex-distinction, has been 



THE UNDERSTANDING. IO3 

earnestly and often quite hopefully sought, but as yet never 
found ; yet, all the same, the real connection of spontaneous life 
with material gravity and levity is a scientific fact beyond all 
questioning. Spontaneous activity and mechanical pull and 
push are really working together in full concurrence and exact 
correspondence, and in this the inorganic and organic king- 
doms have their actual connection. Spontaneous need and 
want, longing and craving, is invitingly and solicitously co-oper- 
ating with expulsive heat, or light, and the attractive matter; 
and by the interposition, in some as yet unknown way to science, 
of spontaneous life, the- organic realm is superinduced upon the 
inorganic. Matter is found instinct with life, and in the vegeta- 
ble kingdom this is all that we can say of its intrinsic mode of 
operation. It has here neither sense nor reflex activity ; it is 
utterly below its own conscious regulation, and works in pure 
spontaneity ; going of its own accord and responsive to its con- 
genial conditioning. The entire vegetable kingdom in specific 
organization is completely within the sway of instinctive sponta- 
neity. The first category of living spontaneity is 

Instinct. What the spontaneity needs for its complete con- 
ception as life is connection with its complemental part of 
materials which now lie altogether over within the mineral king- 
doms, and which are the carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen, 
with their several supplemental primitive substances, which are 
absorbed but not chemically combined by the spontaneity in its 
work of founding its first organic kingdom. These, as it needs, it 
gathers from their promiscuous comminglings with other min- 
erals, and separately takes and fits them for their component po- 
sitions within its own new realm. By taking over to its side these 
material ingredients for its coming organisms, it permanently 
allies the mineral to the vegetable kingdom. The spontaneity 
is from some other quarter given, but scientific experiment, 
while it can say nothing of the origin of the spontaneity, thor- 
oughly tests the reality of these materials and their unalterable 



I04 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

partnership still with the mechanical forces of the inorganic 
realm. These earthy matters are then put in complete coalition 
with the spontaneous agency, and the work of living organiza- 
tion has commenced. 

The vegetable realm manifestly precedes the animal, though 
both are scientifically found quite nearly down to their common 
base among the minerals. The first empirical manifestations of 
life are spontaneous movements. The living motion is from the 
instinctive spontaneity assimilating and combining the tendencies 
of gravity and levity, and of course quite regardless of the 
separate directions of their puUings and pushings. The plant 
movement commences in experience with the seed, sending 
rootlets downward and stock upward from the nutriment enclosed 
in the seedling itself. Henceforth the sustenance is attained 
from the earth by the absorbing root, or as gases from the air by 
the inhaling leaves. In the growing tree, the yoke binds firmly 
the roots and stem together, holding them safe against the dan- 
gerous leverage afforded to the winds, and through this the 
nourishing sap circulates in the entire organism, maturing and 
conserving it as the abiding embodiment and instrument of the 
spontaneous and instinctive architect. The worker within annu- 
ally extemporizes sex-distinctions in the fruit, bud, and blossom, 
and reproduces its kind through successive generations. Such 
is in general the work that is persistently carried on through all 
individual organisms of all vegetable species. The species 
preserves and perpetuates the common properties of its individ- 
uals, the spurious hybrid descendants remaining sterile or tend- 
ing back to their kind, and the improved breeds from artificial 
cultivation at once decline toward their normal state when left 
to their own spontaneous procreation. Assumed indications of 
the spontaneous multiplication of species has no support from 
patient and full tried scientific experiment. From first to last, 
in the vegetable kingdom, instinctive spontaneity reigns alone. 
Neither the acting sovereignty nor the subjected organism shows 



THE UNDERSTANDING. IO5 

any indices of conscious perception or reflective conclusion. 
All is within and without silent, incessant, unconscious activity, 
while yet, in and over all, there is unbroken order amid perpet- 
ually intruding variety. There is continual need and want 
soliciting and stimulating the spontaneity in its work of instinctive 
construction. Yet no recognition of itself within nor of others 
without is manifest till we pass out to the second category of 

Sentiency. This is the original need in the spontaneity that 
beyond an instinctive rule it take on a sentient sway, and 
elevate itself in a new kingdom to the sovereignty of sense- 
consciousness. It introduces and presides over the entire con- 
struction and subsequent action of the Animal Kingdom. The 
instinctive spontaneity still remains and the sentiency is a super- 
induction upon it. The same note of its connection with the 
mineral kingdom is also to be taken, that while no experiment 
has tried any passage from the mineral to the vegetable, so here 
no experiment has ever found the vegetable begetting the animal, 
and yet, all the same, the animal does have carried up within it 
the instinctive spontaneity of the vegetable organism, and does 
take the like^connection with the mineral kingdom as does the 
vegetable, in that it goes down to it for its constituent materials, 
and takes thence the like primitive substances for assimilation 
in its own organisms. Plants and animals are mostly made in 
their bodily construction of the like complemental and supple- 
mental mineral ingredients. The three kingdoms cannot be 
said scientifically to be evolved one from another, but they can 
be said scientifically to stand in direct connection mineral, 
vegetable, and animal. The matters of the first go in to the 
next two, and the instinct of the second is found also in the 
third. 

And now, just as the tree as highest vegetable has been 
organized instinctively, and science can get only the tried 
instinctive spontaneity from it, even its sending the roots to its 
distant sustenance in the earth, and its turning its stock and 



\ 

I06 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

branches to the light, and its extemporized sex-relations having 
all been from instinctive spontaneity alone, so we shall find it if 
we note the up-building of the organism of the highest order of 
sentiency in a Mammal. It will be as truly instinctive as the 
tree, yet not as purely so, for a sentiency is somehow superin- 
duced upon instinct. This helps instinct to take its materials 
from the vitalized matter of the vegetable, as well as from the 
mineral, when better suited to its higher sentient instinct ; and its 
need of a sentient organism, and its want in using it when fin- 
ished, all conspire to the instinctive work of separating, sorting, 
and finally assimilating its assorted elements into the highest 
animal organism. A nervous system with afferent and efferent 
connectives and ganglionic or coordinating centres, locomotive 
members, digestive viscera, and circulating, respiratory, repro- 
ductive, and yet more controlHng than all, as the end of each, 
the special sense organs, the last so formed and placed that 
each has its own spontaneity internal, and its external the most 
facile for outer invasion and ready inner adjustment. Instinctive 
sentiency has done the whole of the organizing, and science can 
get only this, and its complemental chemically equivalent mate- 
rials, by any tried experiments from it. 

This highest instinctive sentiency can now use this, its own 
organism not merely, as does the tree, instinctively, but now 
quite consciously, and can define and distinguish and connect 
its sense-impressions within the scope of its respectively attend- 
ing organs, one sense overlooking and guiding and observing 
another, just as we have already scientifically tested. And not 
this highest Mammal alone, the entire animal race, with all the 
sub-genera and species that have had their separate reality in 
common experience, in its individuality has been alike organized 
and made active in virtue of this myriad-sided instinctive, sentient 
spontaneity. The material elements science can only by testing 
experiment bring up from the mineral through the vegetable, 
but by no new trial can it find the evolved passage of the lower 



THE UNDERSTANDING. lO/ 

Species into the successively uprising genera. Empirical science 
can connect the respective kingdoms and their species only 
through the material complementary part of their conceptions, 
but how the spontaneous complementary part has been origi- 
nated and elevated, science can as yet only presume, since never 
yet has it deduced the higher fact from the lower. We have 
the facts of the ascending sentient organisms, and that all have 
their material connection through each other with the vegetable 
and the mineral, but from whence the spontaneous with its rising 
instincts has come, no scientific activity has by any tried experi- 
ment been able to ascertain. 

We have, however, already found this spontaneity in a higher 
sphere of activity, and may thus now test its organism just 
as we have done in the lower kingdoms. This will introduce 
the category which we must now note : 

Psyche. In the sentiency the observation has been sharp and 
clear in its particular senses, but the connections of these as a 
whole have been so imperfect, and the present objects have passed 
in to the memory so vaguely and obscurely, that if the animal 
retain its bygone perceptions these are too inadequately con- 
structed to permit any extended abstraction, generalization, or 
logical induction ; even though some more highly organized 
brutes from mere memory seem to make surprisingly quick and 
keen judgments, and quite cunningly guide their actions by what 
they have perceived in past experience. They judge according 
to sense, but they have no accurate retent to put under the 
sense and make for it a steadfast understanding. This the 
sentient spontaneity now needs, and with all the elevation it has 
now attained proceeds to the work of constructing the human 
organism in its finer mould and fairer proportions, and with its 
advanced faculty for including common experience in general 
judgments. 

The more richly endowed spontaneity, with sharper instinct, 
goes down amid the mechanical forces of gravity and levity, 



I08 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

hemispheric magnetism and double-sided electricity, galvanism 
and its consequent chemical equivalents, making up one com- 
plemental side of its conception, while its own transitions from 
instinctive action alone through plant, and then animal, and 
now to human organizing make up the other side ; and with 
these augmented advantages proceeds to the completion of 
its crowning work in Man. Even in the embryonic stages 
of his growth pretty sharp distinctions of increasing endow- 
ment are made to appear, and in its maturity the organism 
comes out erect, with open J^row and expressive features, 
and organs of speech as well as sense, and more than all with 
the double intellectual life of sense-observation and under- 
standing-reflection which we have before very concisely and 
sufficiently described. The objects of present observation go 
out from sense and in to the memory in the exact order of their 
perception, and perpetually retreating in the background. This 
newly-working power of the spontaneity here takes the past 
experience back in reflection in the inverse order of the direct 
perception, and holds it in steady contemplation for the full 
attainment of all logical relations. It is the chrysalis form of 
the old earthward observation, floating with a lighter body 
and finer movement in a thinner and purer atmosphere. The 
psyche is the reflex second life of the sentiency ; and here the 
thinking elaborates the construction of the perceiving into the 
tried and tested logical science of the common experience. AU 
spontaneity through all its categories is now virtually within the 
psyche, and stands as a whole in itself with its intrinsic posses- 
sions, aU the parts of which may be noted in their logical succes- 
sions and proportions. Such notice will itself be the last cate- 
gory of spontaneity, and may give for itself its own explanation. 

Relation. The categories in the logic of spontaneity have 
their peculiarly distinctive relations among themselves, thus sepa- 
rating this mode of reflective thinking from all others. 

I. /// all these categories contradictory conceptions are trans^ 



THE UNDERSTANDING. IO9 

formed to complementary conceptions. — The material gravities 
of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen, which are the chem- 
ical equivalents in organic combination through the medium of 
heat, are mechanically exclusive of each other in their colloca- 
tions, and however close in contact, their surfaces are each to 
each utterly impenetrable. But the spontaneities take these 
contradictory material gravities and assimilate them to their 
respective uses, so that in the organism the material and the 
living spontaneity are precisely correspondent and supplemen- 
tal in their conception. The body and the hfe are compene- 
trative and mutually intersusceptive. And this comple mental 
conception is common to the three realms of vegetable, animal, 
and human control; the organisms are instinct with life in 
them all. It is the relation of complemental coefficiencies. 

2. The spontaneities are dominant each in its own sphere, 
and all are subservient to the next higher sphere. — The vege- 
table spontaneity takes the materials from the mineral kingdom 
which it is about to convert to its own organic uses, and 
subjects them completely to its instinctive sway, through all 
its specific and generic types of plant-organization. The ani- 
mal spontaneity then takes its nutriment from the elaborated 
matters of the vegetable organism, as well as immediately from 
the air and the water, and builds up thereby its animal organ- 
isms, through all their rising grades of typical excellency, 
with no reluctance nor resistance from instinctive life below, 
but rather invited thereto by its preformative adaptations. 
And then the psychical sponaneity takes the organisms of 
both plant and animal, and without asking leave from either, 
converts them at pleasure to its higher appetites and appre- 
ciative estimates. This is the relation of means to ends in the 
series of final causes. 

3. The lower categories are within the control of the psychical 
spontaneity. — They cannot come up into it, but it can at pleasure 
use the physical, instinctive, and the sentient for its own ends. 



no EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

It is already endowed with instinctive and sentient life, and the 
human organism has in it the combined gravities and levities 
assimilated in vital communion which capacitate it to be the 
facile instrument of the soul. In this tabernacle the instinctive 
and sentient spontaneities have become reflective, and all past 
experience is put within the reflex area of the understanding- 
consciousness. The cause and condition for thinking in judg- 
ments are brought in unison. It is the relation oifree i7itelligence 
with the reflex experience. 

Here, then, is the termination of all our outlines of logic. 
We may feel sure that in the aforesaid three modes of verified 
thought we have done all that logic can do for a completed 
system of common experience. This last mode given is more 
connected and more comprehensive than any other, and fairly 
unites all the logical kingdoms, mineral, vegetable, animal, and 
psychical, into one connected process of interlogical rule and 
communion. But neither it nor any other empirically tested 
science can make succeeding kingdoms to be evolved prepos- 
terously the higher from the lower ; nor can it or any other 
carry the thought empirically through an assumed generation 
of species one from the other. They all are, in this system of 
categories, fairly and scientifically connected from bottom to 
the top ; but the interconnection of the species in the particular 
kingdoms, and those of the kingdoms with each other, are in no 
one instance found to be evolutions one from another by any 
fairly tested experiment. 

And then, beyond all this, the logical connection goes, and 
can go, no further than the common experience which yet is 
open at both ends. No scientist can carry his experiments to 
the trial of any beginning, nor can he reach beyond the present 
and find an ending ; he can only verify a process that goes 
through experience as it has been, but can say nothing of what 
preceded, nor of what shall succeed. The only mode of mov- 
ing is deduction from uniform and invariable facts, and all pre- 



THE UNDERSTANDING. Ill 

sumption is worthless without the facts, and yet no facts of the 
unbegun or the unending are possible. We must be content, 
perforce, with the connections of the actual, since no science 
can ensphere the whole of experience in a universal. 

Yet is one result quite clear and encouraging, that while mat- 
ter with matter only counterworks and antagonizes, and so must 
by excess push or pull in movement as dynamic, or must balance 
in resistance and rest in static, and can do nothing to relieve 
itself in either, yet the connection of spontaneity with matter is 
ever in concurrence and co-operation. The two are comple- 
mental and correspondent, and are thus working together con- 
genially in communion. The logic of spontaneities is ever a 
logic of conditioning and conditioned harmonies and consis- 
tencies. But still the condition is ever necessary to the sponta- 
neity, and neither is of any account without the other. We may 
then here leave the further consideration of the logical under- 
standing as connected with realities, and have nothing further 
in this chapter claiming consideration but a determination of 
what thinking in the understanding must be when divorced from 
conditioning reahties. 

Section III. : Imagination. This has its varied meaning in 
different applications, and demands a somewhat careful dis- 
crimination. 

I. What is Imagination in the sense now needed ? — When 
one makes the likeness of a present thing, it -is imitation; when 
of an absent thing, it is representatio7t ; and if in either case the 
likeness is determinable by the senses, it will be a fancy-^^lch. 
only ; but if the likeness be determinable only by the correct 
connection of properties to the thing, or of changes in the thing, 
then the work is that of thinking in judgments, and belongs 
not to the sense, but to the logical understanding. It is then 
properly a work of Imaginatiofi and not of Fancy. Thus far, 
however, it is of the reproductive imagination, and would be in 
the same field, and only doing the same work, with which we 



112 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

have thus far been busied in all our outlines of logical cate- 
gories. 

But when we attempt to give some new conception of con- 
nected properties, or a theory for the universal connection in 
experience of things and their properties, and events with their 
changes, we thereby propose a problematic mode of connect- 
ing in judgments and categories which is purely imaginary until 
verified by testing experiments ; and all such presented con- 
ceptions are products which stand alone in the p7'oductive 
imagination so long as destitute of confirmation by accurate 
scientific experiment. Such projected imaginings may be 
amusing, or harmlessly trifling, while taken as only the creatures 
of imagination which they are, or they may be useful if taken as 
only theoretic stimulants to deeper and surer investigation, but 
they can be mischievous only when by any plausible presenta- 
tion they become assumptions of veritable realities. And now, 
as productive imaginations, they must have their rule from their 
logical mode of conception in order that they be taken, as imagin- 
ings only, to be legitimate. The first mode from per7nanent 
conceptions may abstract from the conception any imagined 
more general conception, even to an entire exhaustion of all 
content, but this thinnest shred of a conception must still be 
held as extent for the very content that has been eliminated, 
and the voucher for this and nothing else. And so the second 
mode from changing conceptions may assume any specific quan- 
tity, and make that the ratio for the measure in' which the con- 
ception shall change, but the essence must combine both the 
quality and quantity, and must pass through the measure for 
every change. And the third mode may take any complemen- 
tal factors for the conception, but these must so correspond as 
to work in co-operation through all the process. When so pro- 
duced in any categorical form, the ideal or imaginary colloca- 
tion, succession, or coalition is logically legitimate. 

2. That the produced imagination become science, it mitst 



THE UNDERSTANDING. II3 

pass the tried experiment. — The one decisive test for any per- 
mission to take productive imaginings for scientific attainments 
is that they have passed the trial of accurate experiment. We 
here give only the outlines of the testing process through which 
all productive imagination must pass before it can gain scientific 
acknowledgement. 

The first mode of logical connection, in permanent concep- 
tions, must be in accord with the requisition that all abstract 
conceptions of rising generality, through species and higher 
genera, have their properties in common as tested in reality ; 
and that the transitions from lower to higher genera be found to 
pass in tried fact, the one above directly out from the one below, 
and that in failure of such actual evolving, the whole process 
must be left standing solely as a work of the productive imagi- 
nation, with no authority as a science. 

The second mode, of changing conceptions, must be in accord 
with the rule, that the specific ratio be attained, and that the 
essence actually pass the specific measure at every change of 
the conception ; and that this be unbroken through all experi- 
ence, or in fault of this the whole is an imaginary product only. 

The third mode, of living spontaneity, must abide the test, that 
the spontaneity have its complemental side, in its conditional 
elements, experimentally found in the mineral kingdom, and 
thence actually carried through the successions of the plant and 
animal kingdoms into the realm of the human by rising instinc- 
tive spontaneities up to the psychical ; and wanting this, all pre- 
tence of science is mere imagination.' 

It is thus an infallible conclusion, that the much-mooted theo- 
ries of evolution, mechanical and spontaneous, must find in tried 
experiments their higher conceptions to be actual evolutions 
from the lower in every succeeding grade of ascent, or the theo- 
ries are imaginary and as yet only pretentious and spurious. If 
it still be assumed that the ascent has gone on from the simple 
to the complex through so indefinite eras of past time that it 



114 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

has needed no leap, and has made no gap, the answering demand 
is still the same. Science demands the test of unvarying experi- 
ment, and failing that for any alleged cause, the assumed pro- 
cess, in the nature of the case, excludes itself from all scientific 
acknowledgement. 

3. llie imdej'standing, working in any way beyond logical 
reality, is purely imaginary. — The psyche, or sentient soul, is 
the inverse reflex of past observation, and a vahd retent of 
all that scientific experiment fairly lodges within it. This 
careful experiment may be made from remembrance, tradition, 
history, monumental records, fossil remains, or astronomic cal- 
culation ; and when satisfactorily attained as belonging to a past 
experience, they become legitimate facts for logical recollection, 
and may be put in conceptions, judgments, categories, and gen- 
eral syllogisms, carrying in their conclusions full credit for reality, 
in their assigned collocations and successions, which are hence- 
forth not to be disputed. But here is the limit of its legitimate 
domain, and no matter how logically it pursue its subsequent 
process, pending the interposition of an untried premise, or an 
assumed postulate, the subsequent connections and conclusions 
are but empty imaginings, utterly intolerable to all scientific 
integrity. Any conception with abstract generalization beyond 
the highest genus found in tested experiment, or any assumed 
essence taken through a rate of measure other or further than 
tested experience has been found for it, or any alleged sponta- 
neity whose complemental conditioning has not been actually in 
tried experience, that may have been admitted into its respec- 
tive mode of logic, will in every case have made its result spu- 
rious and coiTupt, and any pretence that this is science, and not 
imagination only, would be impudent arrogance. And now, 
since the first and second modes of logic have been utterly 
incompetent to compass either the beginning or the end of 
experience, -while the third mode, though not enclosing the open 
ends of experience, has connected all within the open ends in 



THE REASON. II5 

one process through all categories, and has moreover begun and 
ended that process by a complemental conception of mechani- 
cal matter and spontaneous agency which have worked together 
in concurrent correspondence throughout, and has left itself 
capable of indefinite regress and progress in perpetual co-opera- 
tion and consistent communion, all this is a fair index pointing 
to and foretokening a higher faculty of human endowment than 
mechanism or spontaneity, which may be empirically found 
practically working out its cognitions in human experience, and 
which, when fully recognized and used, will be found amply suf- 
ficient to comprehend all possible human experience in a com- 
pletely accurate and perfected system. We have done much 
and well with the tested processes of attention in sense and of 
reflex recollection in the logical understanding, but can do no 
more than we have done by scientific experiment and deductions 
from tried realities. And, if more is gained, it must be by a fac- 
ulty that shall authoritatively forecast and induce, and not merely 
take the bygone and deduce. We now, then, proceed to a 
recognition of the Reason, as disclosed in human experience, 
and expect to attain full assent and conviction for its valid 
reality. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE REASON. 



No experiment has yet found the animal which by any pro- 
cess of culture has passed from practical sentiency to scientific 
attainments. But men do rise, as we have now seen, from com- 
mon human experience to empirical science. They are able to 
attain, for they do attain through the logic of mechanical forces 
and the logic of living spontaneities, both physics and ,psy- 



Il6 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

chology, gaining in this latter a scientific recognition of the 
sentient soul of man in the full development of the reflex under- 
standing. This is as far as scientific culture can go, in the 
acceptation that science can use no other faculty than that which 
gets tested facts and logically deduces their valid conclusions. 
And yet science is, even at this advanced position, still within 
experience, and can only say such experience is and such it 
ever has been, but whence it came and whither it leads and 
terminates are questions which science finds it equally impossi- 
ble to stifle or to satisfy. The scientific mind cannot rest with 
this, for if all beyond is nescience, to know thus much is but 
empiricism incomplete and unverified. 

Man, in his original endowment, has an intellectual faculty 
higher than the logical understanding, and which can know 
more than deductive conclusions from tested experiments. 
The proof of this is quite clear. As by a certain stage of intel- 
lectual culture we saw that the psychical faculty was fairly able 
to overlook the observed past and carry its logical connections 
and inductions through all the experience that has been, so by a 
farther stage the faculty is reached, which, by higher authority 
than any logical deduction, can give an induction of that which 
precedes experience, and is authoritative postulate in order to 
experience. This faculty may in full conviction and vindica- 
tion transcend experience. By its insight it may read experi- 
ence thoroughly, and by its oversight it can unfalteringly say 
what has been before experience, and what shall come of it, 
with greater assurance than any logical deduction has ever 
given. No possible deduction from experience has any vahdity 
except as directly dependent on the forecast and compass of 
an all-embracing Reason, and as this all-comprehensive reason 
is brought unmistakably to the clear apprehension of the finite 
human reason. This last faculty is the organ for philosophy, 
as the faculty of the reflex understanding was the organ for 
science ; and if our philosophy is not made ultimately valid 



THE REASON. 11/ 

through the full recognition of this higher faculty, our precedent 
science is but a mere seeming in an utter void. 

We may as empirically find this faculty of reason as we did 
the faculties of sense and understanding. This is what we now 
need and propose to do, leaving the attainment of a universal 
philosophy by this faculty for future study. 

Section I. : Recognition of Reason. We shall attain to a 
full acknowledgment of the higher faculty of reason by passing 
onwards to it through successive preliminary gradations, each 
of which will advance us to positions of clearer vision, and 
finally put us in full possession and better use of the faculty 
than any more abruptly attempted seizure of it. 

I. Our scientific cultivation has been possible only within the 
dawn of reason. — We were led to the trial of the common 
experience over again, and lifted by the begun undertaking to a 
higher standpoint, only through the incipient illumination of our 
higher human endowment. Without such endowment we must 
have remained where the animals are, with neither the capability 
nor the desire to test the facts of sense-perception by careful 
and repeated experiments. And when the stimulant of this 
illumination had aroused the few to engage in scientific experi- 
ments, it was only the advance of the morning twilight that 
induced them to settle on the one scientific method which has 
been so unhesitatingly adopted, of getting tested facts, sorting 
and classifying them, and then pushing to bring the facts into 
as complete a system as was possible. All the earnest effort of 
empirical science has not yet been able to complete the system 
as required, and this never will be done but by the coming in 
of reason's fall morning. How then account for the original 
rule of scientific procedure but in the fact of man's rational 
endowment? Man has his rational instincts as truly as the 
animal has his sentient instincts. 

This morning dawn of reason was increasing in the capability 
to discern and test the facts of a self-acting spontaneity, and in 



Il8 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

this to attain a psychology as thoroughly tested by experiment 
as any well-tried physiology ; and more especially we find the 
growing dawn in the clear detection of the fallacies of the Logic 
of mechanical forces in both its parts of permanent and of 
changing conceptions. This enabled us to see that no abstract 
generahzations could be made to pass on beyond reality and 
stand as vouchers for the universal ; and that no crowding of the 
essence through specific measures could prevent its ultimate 
self-relation from terminating in an immovable solid on one 
side, or a volative explosion on the other; and thus tliat by 
neither side of the Logic can common experience possibly be 
systematized. And then even still more advanced is the dawn, 
when the Logic of the living spontaneity connects all the king- 
doms — mineral, vegetable, animal, and psychical — in one, and 
then leaves the process open at each end for either a correspon- 
dent regress or progress. No self-elevation of sense, or of its 
reflex in the understanding, could give to either the sense or the 
understanding this capability to look through and over itself, 
and so detect its own deficiency while intent in the exercise of 
its proper logical capabilities. The rational no more came 
direct from the psychical than did the psychical from the sen- 
tiency or the sentient from the instinctive spontaneity ; but the 
rational in man, when made his endowment, may then be cul- 
tivated so as to give a critique of Logic, and furnish an impera- 
tive claim of unquestioning assent to its fair inductions. 

The Christian revelation recognizes reason in man as a divine 
superinduction upon the sentient soul; and to this science 
should most readily assent, since she has never been able by 
any tried experiment to evolve the reason from the under- 
standing, and can only cultivate the understanding in the hght 
of the superinduced rationality ; but when reason has become 
such a divine endowment, its growing light may evince its illu- 
mination of the psychical ere the sentient soul has awaked to 
the recognition of such a spiritual impartation and elevation. 



THE REASON. IIQ 

While the eye does not see itself nor the ear hear itself, while 
neither observation nor reflection could take note of its own 
process, yet as a fact of experience we not only know what these 
operations are, and what must have been before them in order 
that they might be, but we take note also of ourselves as both 
capable of these operations and of looking before and through 
and after them. The common mind has already in it that 
which education may draw out to logical science, and thence 
to spiritual philosophy ; and the higher differs from the lower, 
not in specific common properties, but only in comparative 
development, the lowest human mind ever catching some rays 
from its God-given spirituality. 

2. Reason has further recognition with the induction of cause 
and effect. — The psyche is but an exact reflex of the sen- 
tiency, and can claim as understanding no authority for its 
deductions beyond the order of facts that have been tested in 
the sense-observation. The term which expresses the uniform 
fact is also itself the law for all facts in uniformity. In the 
logic, Logos is both word and law, the expressed fact is itself 
the universal rule, and the logical science can have no other 
authority for the deduction of what will be, but the tested 
uniformity of what has been. Hence science can use no other 
meaning for cause than invariable antecedent and consequent, 
viz., this must ever be thus because it always has been thus. 
But it is a clear fact of experience that we all do give a deeper 
meaning than this to cause, and a firmer bond than this to 
cause and effect. While neither sense-observation nor under- 
standing reflection can know anything oi forces, yet somehow or 
other we have been all along, though often all unawares, making 
use of these, both static and dynamic, as the essential basis and 
efflciency of the standing and flowing phenomena of our expe- 
rience. The bodies of the solar system whose motions we have 
observed and put in systematic arrangement, we do also know 
are kept in their places and driven in their periodic revolutions 



120 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

by Static and dynamic forces. These forces we know to be 
prerequisites for the movements and arrangements of the solar 
system, as experience itself has enabled us to see and know 
them to be. The forces we know were first, and experience 
has been their product. 

So, moreover, when we come to the connection of living 
spontaneities with their sequences we have a deeper meaning 
and by far a firmer bond. The life-instinct takes the mineral 
elements for ternary or quaternary chemical combinations, 
digests, assimilates, and incorporates them in the organism, 
works on in perpetuating it, and at length in reproducing others 
of its hke, and we have the irrepressible conviction that there 
is a causal law precedent to the sequence, and that but for 
this precedent cause the consequent event could not have been. 
There is here a faculty, not ^<?ducing from past uniformity, but 
authoritatively /;?.ducing from present insight a working causahty 
that makes the consequent more than certainty, even a neces- 
sity ; without it the effect could not be, with it the effect cannot 
but be. 

This instinctive life is working through all the vegetable king- 
dom, greatly varied in the varied plant species and higher 
genera, but invariable in its order through the same species 
and genera down the Hne of multiplying descendants. Then a 
higher instinctive sentiency is building up its higher organisms 
in the animal kingdom, variable in the various species, but 
fixed in the same species ; and here also is the higher causal 
spontaneity working in each sense-organ according to its order, 
but various in the varied organs. In all these cases, the like 
faculty from its insight not only unhesitatingly affirms, but 
imperatively demands, the induction of a causal agency prece- 
dent to the effect, and in order that such effect should be. 

And so also with all psychical processes there is a psyche- 
organism begotten, and a psychical causality working in the 
organism in exact complemental correspondence of condition 



THE REASON. 121 

and spontaneity; and while, to the psyche itself, its logos, as 
word and law, is the invariable order of experience, yet, to the 
insight of the higher faculty, here also an induction of causal 
efficiency, precedent to the thinking and in order that the think- 
ing may be, is as authoritatively demanded as in the aforecited 
cases of plant or animal organisms. In all the above cases of 
induction by insight the authority .is paramount and the assent 
more loyal than in the case of any deduction from mere logical 
uniformity. The higher faculty of Reason is here unmistakably 
distinct from the logical understanding. 

, 3. The recognition of i-eason is still further advanced by its 
induction of space and tiuie. — The induction of cause and effect 
determines the collocation of the properties of the effect, and in 
this is fixed the place of the effect ; and the connection of the 
successive effects determines their sequences, and in this fixes 
their periods. When cause and effects are once given in the 
reason, the understanding deduces the places and periods, inas- 
much as they depend upon the collocations and successions 
of the causes and effects ; but the understanding can go no fur- 
ther than the deduction of place and period. Neither can the 
sense by any organ get more than larger or smaller place or 
period, nor can the reflex from past sense-observation give the 
understanding more than lesser or larger place and period, and 
thus neither from the precedent sense-observation nor from the 
reason induction of cause and effect can there be a psychical 
deduction of aught beyond places and periods. The science 
of the psyche, as such, can recognize nothing of space and 
time. 

But reason as reason, by its own insight of place and of 
period, at once induces space as necessarily precedent to places, 
and time as the necessary precedence to periods. The places 
must already be in space and the periods in time. The reason 
does not deduce space from place nor time from period, but 
postulates the space and the time as necessary in order to any 



122 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

place or period. The places and periods could not be except 
as the space and the time already had been. The causes and 
effects work themselves out in their places and periods, and fix 
these in their relative collocations and successions, the places 
extending themselves in space, and the periods succeeding each 
other in time ; the space does not stretch, but the places extend 
themselves within its immensity; the time does not flow, but 
the periods pass along down its immobility. The substantial 
effects register themselves in their localities, and the causal 
efficiencies leave their impress in the linked sequences. The 
deductive logic of the understanding can have no ruling here, 
— the entire domain is under the imperatives of the reason. 

And here is just the difference between the abstract concep- 
tions of the psyche and the pure paradigms of the reason. The 
ultimate abstraction and generalization of the understanding 
is the superficial extent of the conception, which then has no 
content, but which yet is significant for just that and only that 
content from which it has been arbitrarily taken. The para- 
digm is that precedent modelling agency which the insight of 
reason induces as the necessary forecast in order that the com- 
ing event may so register itself in space and time as it is sub- 
sequently found to be. The reason has the sentiency and the 
psyche in full possession, and recognizes the exact modelling 
efficiency beforehand conditional for the event which the sense 
is to observe and the psyche to reflect. Aristotle always worked 
with the conception only, whfle Plato had the insight to the 
precedent working paradigm. That was to Plato, " the thing 
in itself," even while yet working itself out ; but for Aristotle 
nothing yet was that had not been logically conceived, and 
the most comprehensive being must be taken only by the most 
extensive abstraction. 

Here also is the distinction between abstract conceptions 
and pure constructions in geometrical diagrams. No such dia- 
grams would be possible for us if we had only the sense and 



THE REASON. 123 

the understanding. The understanding has place but not 
space ; and as the place is but a deduction from some observed 
object, all the diagrams which the understanding may construct 
must be made from objects which have been first given to it, 
and cannot thus be pure geometrical diagrams. The surface 
abstraction is made the Hmit of the figure, and thus the figure 
includes its perimeter. The angle is thus the point made by 
the limits, and not the point of the area within the limits, and 
the same would be true of any other figure. Such figures are 
not themselves boundaries, but need to have their boundaries 
assigned as truly as do the bodies from which they have been 
taken. It thus follows that no similar figures, as triangles, 
circles, spheres, etc., can be any more coincident than could 
be the completely conceived bodies from which these figures 
are abstracted ; since, in putting the two in any way together, 
the abstract figures in contact would have surfaces as impene- 
trable as the bodies themselves ; while, moreover, a body with a 
perfect figure, as square, cube, circle, etc., must first be found 
as object before the perfect figure can be abstracted. No two 
equal right-angled triangles could thus be put together in a 
common hypothenuse, so as to make of the two a square ; for 
the hypothenuse of each triangle would hold each its own place, 
and the two could not become one figure. No cylinder could 
thus revolve upon its axis, nor a wheel upon its centre ; for the 
abstract axis or centre is not a line nor a point, but needs itself 
to be bounded and therefore to revolve as truly as the body to 
which it belongs. But it is a fact of experience that the mind 
does construct geometrical diagrams which are pure boundaries 
in space, and neither need nor admit of boundaries themselves. 
Such constructions are made perfect by a universal rule for their 
construction, and not by bokig abstracted from some perfect 
body. The demand for and the induction of pure geometrical 
diagrams evinces that man is endowed with a rational faculty 
above the psychical, and the opportunity for the scientist to test 



124 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

this by any amount of new experiments is as open in the experi- 
ence of the reason as it has been in those of the sense and the 
understanding. 

And now, just as in the sense the scope of vision was the 
largest place and the broad field for the sense-consciousness, 
and also, just as the reflex of this sense-place became the largest 
place and the wide field for the reflective consciousness, even 
so is the receptivit)' or capacity of the reason the reason's 
space, in which there may be extension in three directions, 
length, breadth, and thickness, and the reason's time with suc- 
cessions in one direction. The reason-space is thus immeasur- 
able and immovable, since within reason there can be no takinsf 
out nor putting in, nor transfer of parts, and beyond reason 
there can be no additions. Reason circumscribes the sentiency 
and the psyche, and brings thus the content of the one and the 
retent of the other to be its own infeiif, and is thus in its own 
right the comprehensive possessor of universal experience. 

Sectiox II. : Recogxition of a Reason beyond that which 
15 HU^LA2s, We have now fully come to the recognition of a 
human faculty for knowing, which is quite above the sentiency 
and the psyche, and which thus transcends both sense and 
understanding. But thus far this higher faculty has been not 
merely in the same organism as the sentiency and the psyche, 
and so has been human ; it has also been in coimection wnth 
the sense and understanding in their cognizing work, and so has 
illuminated all their science. We may now see that, if the da\^-n 
of reason in man had not found its opening in the common 
experience, no mind would have risen above its fellows and 
begun the work of science by testing the old in new trials of 
more careful experiment. Nowhere has the scientific mind 
been below the illumination of re5^on, while nowhere also, as far 
as we have yet gone, has reason been above the help of scien- 
tific experiment. It has been only by scientific experiment, by 
the careful tr>'ing over again of our experience, that we have 



THE REASON. 1 25 

come to the knowledge of reason. Reason has thus reached 
down and enhghtened science, and experiment has reached up 
and helped philosophy, until now when science helped by the 
dawning reason has carried us through the sense and the under- 
standing, and then philosophy helped by scientific experiment 
has brought us to the full attainment of the higher faculty of 
human reason, we have not only an established science but are 
able to proceed to a purely rational philosophy. As prepara- 
tory to such a philosophy, after the consideration of the Suscep- 
tibility and the Will shall have completed our Empirical Science 
of the Mind, we may here note very cursorily the indications 
which the Intellect affords to us of the recognition of a Reason 
higher than the human reason. 

I. We need a sufficient reason for the cause indicced by the 
human reasojz. — The cause that the human reason induced was 
that which produced the uniform collocations and invariable 
successions found in experience, and which the logic of the 
understanding made to be the ultimate rule for its judgments and 
syllogistic conclusions. The cause efficiently made them and 
so sufficiently accounted for them. But then the query inevi- 
tably arises, What and whence is this cause? The cause was all 
along the living spontaneity, and its condition was the supplied 
mechanical elements of carbon, etc., the cause being effective 
only in the possession of its conditional elements, and the 
cause and condition always working in exact correspondence. 
In vegetable life the cause was simple life-instinct ; in animal 
life the cause had its added sentiency and constructed its ner- 
vous organism and the special senses, and in the human the 
cause had its psychical addition and produced its organism of 
the reflex psyche, in all cases modifying, in the process, the 
conditional elements to the concurring correspondence of the 
cause and condition. 

And now it cannot suffice to assume that the conditional 
forces of the elements were caused by a precedent force, for that 



126 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

force would still need its prior force ; nor can it suffice to say 
that a spontaneous instinct, precedent to the vegetable, gave the 
vegetable life-instinct, for that would as much need its prior. 
The postulate of the human reason is to find whence has come 
this continual concurrence and correspondence of cause and 
condition, and no presupposition of either a mechanical force 
or an instinctive spontaneity can satisfy. Reason only can give 
and perpetuate such correspondence, and that too through such 
rising stages of intelligence in the effects. Mechanism has no 
reason ; instinctive spontaneity has no reason ; the human 
reason that induced the cause only authoritatively demanded, 
but by no means produced, that is, made the cause. The 
sufficient reason must have been before the cause and in order 
to the cause, and a reason adequate to the cause, or the human 
demand is utterly unsatisfied ; and all this must require a reason 
above the human reason. The human reason has its insight of 
all this, but no sense perceives it ; and the human understand- 
ing, immediately from the reason-insight, deduces the unhesi- 
tating conviction, that only a reason higher than the human can 
be sufficient for these continued uprising causalities. The alter- 
native to this must be, that these causalities have come from 
unreason, and such an absurdity must be abhorrent to any 
rational being, and quite as conclusive for the higher reason as 
a tried experiment could be. 

2. We need a higher reason than the hiwian for the space 
and time induced by the human reason. — The scope of vision 
is the highest place, and successions in it give the highest 
periods that the sense can cognise, and the human reason 
cognises its own space-immensity and time-eternity as beyond 
all place and period. 

Space, for human reason, is its capacity to take in all meas- 
ures of extension, with its three directions of length, breadth, 
and height, which the understanding or its imagination may 
have any occasion to make. And the same for Time, with its 



THE REASON. 12/ 

measures of succession in one direction. The space is immen- 
sity and the time is eternity for the human capacity, and is 
adequate for all human constructions ; and yet this immensity 
and eternity for the human may consciously be inadequate to 
exhaust all measure for some more comprehensively construct- 
ing agency. The space and time for man's reason are rather 
so much as he can use of a higher reason's space and time, 
while the man cannot comprehend either the space or the time, 
other than that they are the man's own possessions and quite 
within his rule and jurisdiction. The human sense and under- 
standing and reason are, to man's own consciousness, the intent 
of some higher reason, and not overt and independently isolate 
in an immensity and eternity of his own. As an intelligent 
being in his highest rationality, man is best satisfied when he 
most cheerfully assents to the conviction of a derived existence, 
and that for him there is the necessity for an immensity and an 
eternity a parte ante to his own. This conviction, that the 
absolute space and time which the man's reason has induced 
is no property of his own, is quite sufficient for the truth of a 
higher reason, in the absence of all empirical certainty. 

3. In this higher reason is the completed system of common 
experience. — The insight of the human reason has seen the 
necessity for this higher reason in order to originate causality, 
and also to be capacity for the immensity of space and the 
eternity of time. It thus excludes the absurdity that causality 
had originated, and that space and time had been conserved, 
in unreason. Since unreason is not only other than reason, 
but is intrinsic opposition to reason, the denial of the truth of 
absolute reason is so absurd that its affirmation is as much 
beyond the need, as it is beyond the practicability, of an empir- 
ical confirmation. 

This absolute certainty of the being of absolute reason per- 
fectly systematizes common experience, otherwise presenting 
a problem thoroughly insoluble. Mechanical force is comple- 



128 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

mentally held in the conception of living spontaneity, and this 
again in the spontaneous sentiency, and this further in the 
psychical spontaneity, wherein all scientific certainty ceases, 
but is again philosophically sustained by the insight of human 
reason in the induction of causahty through the exact co-opera- 
tion of the organic elementary forces with the efficient spon- 
taneous activities ; all this gives a connected process in the 
insight of human reason, and this is infallibly held, in its 
immensity and eternity, in the absolute space and time of the 
all-comprehensive Divine Intelligence. 

Universal human experience is thus intelligibly found in its 
facts, which are wholly sorted and classified in their separate 
kingdoms, which have in them their respective species, genera, 
orders, and classes, all tested in their reality by tried experi- 
ment, the top animality surmounted by humanity, and all held 
in perfect consistency by the one rational Divinity. 

The human Individuality and separate Personality will reveal 
themselves satisfactorily in the coming chapters of the Suscep- 
tibility and the Will. We have now seen that cognition which 
necessarily inverted and reflected the sentiency in the psyche 
has reconciled the ambiguity in the comprehending spirituality. 

Section III. : Reason knows ultbiate Beaut\^, Truth, and 
Goodness. The human reason which knows itself as finite, 
and knows a higher reason than itself, as the absolute reason, 
knows thus the supreme archetypes or patterns of all possi- 
ble excellence. These archetypes when manifest to the human 
reason in form are Beauty, in principle are Truth, and in the 
personal self are the Good. The Beautiful, the True, and the 
Good are alike in that they all accord with reason ; they differ 
not in that any one is of a higher or lower degree than the 
others, but that each is a peculiar way in which reason can be 
revealed. Each is absolute in its own way. 

Beauty, truth, or goodness is determined by the standard of 
reason alone. The requirement of reason gives law to art and 



THE REASON. 1 29 

philosophy and personal conduct, and the only proper criticism 
is that whicli properly expresses the discernment of reason. 

The standard of criticism, which is the standard of reason, is 
the idea. An idea is literally (etSo?, tSia, oTSa, wit, wise, wis- 
dom, vision^ that whose vision makes us wise. It is a capa- 
bility of reason, by which alone beauty, truth, or goodness is 
possible. Wisdom is the vision of ideas, or the insight which 
reason has into its own capabilities. 

The idea is not made, nor can it in any sense be possessed 
by an individual. One may not speak of his ideas. In just so 
far as they are his, and not equally another's, they are not ideas. 

The idea is and must be universal, and the proof that men 
everywhere recognize it as such is seen whenever they criticize 
or dispute. Why should one criticize another's work unless the 
same standard which controls the one ought to have controlled 
the other also ? And how can two persons dispute, unless they 
both acknowledge a common standard by which the dispute can 
be adjusted? There is no absurdity greater than that of deny- 
ing such a common standard, for the moment one seeks to 
justify such a denial, he appeals for this justification to the very 
standard which he has denied. 

The idea is all perfect. We may err in our apprehension 
of it, we need caution as well as clearness of vision here, but 
when .the idea is seen in its own light, i.e., when it is revealed 
as self-evident and universal, it is disclosed to us as the ultimate 
perfection, as is proved by the fact that we judge of all imper- 
fection from its lacking the ideal. The imperfect cannot reveal 
itself as imperfect. Its imperfection, is only seen in the light of 
the all-perfect. There is no standard of the imperfect but only 
of the perfect. There is nothing in themselves by which we 
can discern or declare the ugly, the false, or the wrong, but 
these are first revealed as they are in the light of the true, the 
beautiful, and the good. If we had been born in the darkness, 
and had never seen nor heard of the light, we should have no 



130 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

knowledge even of the darkness ; and if no vision of ideal per- 
fection had ever arisen upon us, we should be as ignorant of 
the imperfect as of the perfect. 

Reason thus has its measure for all intelligence, and may 
carry an. ultimate standard of criticism into each sphere of 
Esthetics, Physics, and Ethics, and can thus decide with 
authority whether that which is fills its perfect measure. Rea- 
son thus is the sole and ultimate test for that which is univer- 
sally best. 

Section IV. : Genius. We have already discriminated the 
fancy and the imagination so as to leave no occasion for mis- 
take in reference to either, the former determinable to the sense 
only and the latter to the understanding alone. We have now 
attained the faculty of Reason as above both the sense and 
understanding, and when this higher power breathes an inner 
life into what would otherwise be the dead products of these- 
lower faculties, it becomes Genius," dcri^ is the prerogative of 
man only as he is rational spirit. 

It is the large endowment of reason that gives genius, and 
the varieties of genius correspond to the threefold way in which 
reason is manifested. The genius is either artist, or sage, or, in 
the literal sense of the word, hero, as in large degree he sees 
and expresses the beautiful, the true, or the good. We note 
here only briefly the characterization of the sage as he shows 
himself to be either the inductive, the productive, or the specu- 
lative genius ; the mind, which traces up events to their causes 
and determines their abiding or changing pecuHarities by an 
induction of first principles or primitive efficiencies, which 
expounds the facts of experience inducing their causes or 
principles, is in this respect an hiductive Genius. When this 
propensity to seize primitive causes, and get from them fixed 
principles and standard rules for future action, endows a mind 
so highly that the life becomes prolific of good results and 
successful attainments in any favorite enterprise or professional 



THE REASON. I3I 

employment, such a mind may well be said to be a Produc- 
tive Genius. But, whether productive or inductive, inasmuch 
at it is positive realities which a person thus endowed has 
taken in hand, he does not permit himself to lose these in 
empty abstractions, nor on the other hand does he allow them 
to entangle themselves in unravelled absurdities, or to have 
their path barred by impassable contradictions. The "love 
of wisdom " turns to madness when it attempts to work with 
impredicable generalities of either being or action, and it 
becomes folly when it assays the comprehension of all human 
experience by running up and down a ladder, both ends of 
which must ever be within experience ; while the philosophic 
genius in its speculation must hold to experience, it must also 
look over and through all experience. 

There is sometimes a mind of such high rational endowment, 
that, having been awakened by experience to search after the 
hidden truths which are beyond experience, it beholds the 
truth in its own light, and is properly characterized as a Specu- 
lative Genius. Minds thus endowed are guided only by the 
most rigid imperative of philosophic integrity, and are equally 
above the control of poetic license or the need of scientific 
experiment. There is before them nothing but the contradic- 
tion between reason and unreason, and either the everlasting 
consistency of the one or the endless absurdity of the other must 
be taken. There is no appeal to sense or psychical reflection, 
and only a standing in reason or a sinking in folly that can be 
put over one against the other. 

And when brought to this point we know that a rational being 
can have but one conviction, which does not need the test of 
an experiment, and which could not receive any additional 
vahdity if such experiment could be applied. That which 
elevates the man above the animal, which gives to him all self- 
respect and all claim to respect from others ; that which debases 
him the most when he violates it, and which he most resents 



132 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

when another insults it, and which never can permit any man 
to say, It is just as well for me to debase, and for another to 
insult this reason as it is for me or others to respect and honor 
it ; that which every man thus claims for himself and feels bound 
to accredit to another, and, in losing which, both himself and 
the other know they have lost all worth possessing, — that all 
experience must be judged by, and must be made to conform 
to, and must be held responsible for, or the only alternative is 
everlasting self- disapprobation and the condemnation of all 
others. Here, then, is the ultimate test of truth, covering all 
experience by going beyond all experience, and testing the in- 
telligence beyond all empirical modes of trial, by putting the 
rational man's allegiance to his endowment of reason, with only 
the alternative that he keep it sacred or go over to the opposite 
mireason. 



SECOND DIVISION. 



THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. 

WE have thus far been dealing with the intellect only, and 
thus have been conversant only with facts of knowing. 
We have recognized the mechanical forces, which have interest 
neither in knowing nor in being known ; the instinctive spon- 
taneity that builds up the vegetable organism without con- 
sciousness ; the sentient spontaneity that builds up the animal 
organism in the ends of sense-consciousness ; the , psychical 
spontaneity that reflects past observation in the retent of the 
understanding for the sake of logical science ; and have attained 
the human reason in the interest of inducing truth precedent 
to experience in order to the philosophical comprehension of 
experience. All has thus been done in the interest and for the 
end of cognition alone. But no form of cognition is ultimate, 
and knowing is itself in the interest of a further end. What we 
come to know affects us agreeably or disagreeably, and our 
intelligent capability takes nothing which does not quicken 
under it some pleased or displeased feeling. The intellectual 
capability has ever under it an answering Susceptibility to which 
the imparted gift is genial or ungenial, and which prompts at 
once to a still further activity for gratified possession or a 
disgusted rejection. It is this sub-attendant upon cognition, 
as it comes up in experience, that we are now to try over. 

We could not reach this motive-susceptibility as the spring 
to all executive agency except by a passage through the intel- 

133 



134 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

lect; and this intellect itself, separate from the susceptibility, 
would be but a sluggish, moribund faculty, fruitless and worth- 
less in its own solitude. Each intellectual faculty of the sense, 
understanding, and reason has its own separate susceptibility, 
and through these come all the urgencies and quickening ener- 
gies that start human enterprises and secure their practical 
accomplishment. Not here, then, need we be attentive to the 
tendencies precedent to cognition by which the spontaneity is 
brought into intellectual activity ; but, after having cognized and 
thereby brought up the susceptibility to a quickened state of 
feeling, we are in this, by the like scientific experiments as 
before, to find what are the facts of feeling in common experi- 
ence, how they are to be sorted and classified, and how at last 
they may be put into an exact and complete system. 

We may, first, find it profitable to note, some general grada- 
tions of feelings among themselves. Beginning quite down 
in the incipiency of feeling which though sentient is yet as 
instinctive as the earliest spontaneous agency, we may see 
what changes in form they take on, by their successive modify- 
ing interactions, and by what terms they may be denoted. 

When any impression is made upon any portion of the bodily 
organism, that is in communication with the brain as the grand 
sensorium, we have a sensation. The same also is true, when 
any inner agency of the mind affects itself, and thus induces an 
internal sensation. All this has been sufficiently considered 
under the head of Primitive Facts, and we need only refer to 
what has already there been attained. The sensation is ante- 
cedent to consciousness, and conditional to the perception of 
any phenomenon. We take, thus, sensation, in the absence 
of all distinct and definite consciousness, and we can only say 
of it, that it is mere blind feeling. No object is thereby given, 
and no separation in consciousness of the mind from its objects 
and thus, as yet, no self- consciousness is attained. Still, this 
blind feeling is not indifference to some end. There is an 



THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. 1 35 

intrinsic congeniality to certain results, which can only be 
known as a natural sympathy, or spontaneous attraction to a 
particular end, and thus in its blindness the feeling has its 
urgency in very determinate directions. It is feeling in a living 
agent, and prompts the agency in the direction thus inherently 
congenial with itself. The impulses of such blind feeling are 
known as Instinct. 

This is the same, from the lowest to the highest orders of 
sentient beings, so far as these act in the absence of self-con- 
sciousness. From the simplest and most imperfect, up to the 
most complicated and completed organization, the sensation 
will be as manifold as the occasions for impressions upon living 
organs; but in all cases it will be such, and so much, blind 
feeling, going out towards its congenial ends, and thus, action 
only under the impulses of instinct. There is no light of con- 
sciousness, or of reason to guide ; but the whole is controlled 
by that original creative act, which determined the congeniali- 
ties of the feeling to its objects. Brute nature, unendowed with 
reason, but yet iitted with its adaptations by the Absolute 
Reason, is everywhere instinctively acting out its most rational 
issues. Jt does not know why it does as it does ; its adapta- 
tions of means to ends are instinctive and not intelligent, but 
in all these adaptations the presiding presence of a Supreme 
Intelligence can be ever seen. 

When feeling is no longer blind, but has come out in con- 
sciousness, so that it may properly be known as a self-feeling, 
it at once loses the directing determination of the natural want, 
or congenial attra.ctiveness to its end, and is thus instinctive 
impulse no longer. The agent feels in the light, and no more 
waits on the instinctive prompting, but seeks the guidance of 
conscious perceptions. Not now is it feeling blindly impelled, 
but feeling waiting to be consciously led to its end, and thus an 
appetency to its object. In such a position, sensation has 
risen from an instinct to an appetite. The feeling is living and 



136 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

active as before, and tends towards its congenial end; but it 
has raised itself above, and thus lost, its instinctive determining ; 
it waits on perception in experience to guide it, and should 
here be known as susceptibility waiting on the determining intel- 
ligence. Thus the blind feehng of want in the infant, that 
instinctively reaches the breast, becomes conscious hunger in 
the man, and looks around for an object to satisfy it. 

When the feehng, as appetite, has gratified itself in an appro- 
priate object, and that object has thereby become known as 
competent to impart this gratification, and thus there is no longer 
an appetency for something that may gratify, but the object 
that gratifies is itself known; the sensation has risen from a 
mere appetite, and become a desire. Hunger craves without 
a known object, but as an appetite it seeks for such object; 
desire also craves, but it is for a specific, known object, and 
as having already its understood capacity to gratify the feeling. 

In all desire there is a craving, a longing that would attract 
the object to itself, as it were, to fill up a void ; but when the 
feeling would go over to the object, and permanently ally itself 
with it, it has lost all its characteristic of a craving, and is, as it 
were, an effort at absorbing it, and thus is no longer a desire, 
but an inclination. A desire craves, and at once expires in 
exhausting the object ; an inclination bends towards, and per- 
manently fixes itself upon the object. 

There is that in the constitution, or that which has been sub- 
sequently acquired, which determines the direction of the incli- 
nations, and without which, and against which, it would be 
impracticable that the particular inclinations should be experi- 
enced. This constitutional or acquired impetus to a given 
inclination is a propensity. We shall subsequently better see 
how propensities are to be controlled, and how inclinations that 
are determined from them are nevertheless responsible ; but at 
present the sole object is to define the different leading divi- 
sions of feeling, and thus discriminate them in our conscious- 



THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. 13/ 

ness, and not to look at them in their different aspects toward 
moral accountability. 

When the mental activity is passing on in even flow, whether 
thinking, feeling,- or willing, and there suddenly on any occasion 
arises a perturbation of feeling, a ruffling and disturbing of the 
placid tranquil experience, which, for the time, to a degree 
confuses and bewilders, arresting all onward movement to an 
object, and holding the susceptibility in a state of agitation, 
without any prompting of inclination or direct craving of desire, 
such a state of feeling is properly termed emotion. The feehng 
in desire and inclination has its distinct object not only, but 
also a distinct action towards it ; the feeling in emotion has also 
its object, but it is as if in commotion before it. In wonder, I 
stand before the object astonished ; in awe, I stand con- 
founded; in joy, I stand transported; in fear, I stand trans- 
fixed ; in all, I stand before the object with feelings so confused 
and disturbed, that there is no direct current of feeling towards 
any end. That normal state of the susceptibihty which predis- 
poses it to emotion, is excitability ; and this may be a general 
sensibility, that awakes in agitation with every changing wind 
that passes over the mental surface ; or it may be a tendency 
to agitation from certain sources only, and thus a predisposition 
to particular characteristic emotions. 

When the onward movement of desire or inclination towards 
its object is suddenly invaded, and the whole mind put in con- 
fusion, and yet the emotion, instead of arresting the current, 
goes on with it and makes it to be a perpetually perturbed 
and agitated flow of feeling, the desire or inclination being so 
strong that the emotion does not suspend nor change its direc- 
tion, it is then passion. The distinction between emotion and 
passion is, that simple emotion is agitated feeling with no cur- 
rent, while passion has the strong current of desire still rushing 
onward to its object, though so agitated as to pursue it blindly 
and furiously. And still farther, the distinction between incli- 



138 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

nation and passion is, that simple inclination is an even flow, 
while passion is that flow disturbed by a strong emotion. A 
sudden danger to a child may so arrest the current of natural 
aflection, that the parent stands transfixed in an emotion of 
fear ; or it may be that natural afl'ection rushes on in spite of 
all disturbance, and strives to rescue in a frenzy of passion. 
Othello's love for Desdemona is not arrested by lago's repre- 
sentations of unfaithfulness, but only terribly agitated, and 
pushes on in a frenzy of jealous passion. No increase of 
emotion or of inclination can make passion, but strong emotion 
and inclination must be blended to produce passion. 

When the mind, either through its judgment or its insight, 
has committed itself to some practical conclusion in which it 
finds an interest, the interested feeling which springs up in and 
with this commitment is a sentiment. 

When the susceptibility is quickened by the presence of a 
rule of right, given in the insight of reason, there is at once the 
constraint of an imperative awakened ; the conviction of duty 
arises, and the feeling is that of obligation. In desire, the 
feeling goes out in craving for its object ; in inclination, it goes 
out to rest upon its object ; in obligation, the object comes to 
it, and throws its imperative bonds upon it. The forecasting 
of a time of trial and arraignment before some judicial tribunal 
awakens the peculiar feeling of responsibility ; and the inward 
consciousness of having resisted the current of obhgation is 
accompanied with the feeling of guilt ; and the self-accusation 
which ever attends the feeling of guilt induces the feeling of 
re7nof'se. 

When the inclination goes out to its object under the deter- 
mination of a permanent propensity, it is affection. If this 
permanent propensity is constitutional, whether it be tempera- 
ment of body or original conformation of mind, it is natural 
affection ; if the propensity is in a state of will as reigning dis- 
position, it is moral affection. All affections are feelings, but 



THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. 1 39 

the prepense direction to them may come from physical con- 
stitution, or from ethical disposition. 

This maybe sufficient for. the discrimination of the leading 
acts of the susceptibihty, and, without here attempting to find 
every specific feeling that may come into human experience, 
and classifying them all under some of the above definitions, or 
without implying that there are no other generic forms of the 
activity of our sentient nature, which might render farther dis- 
criminations necessary, before we should make our analysis 
complete in this direction, the above is sufficiently comprehen- 
sive for all necessary direction and illustration, while the 
designed order of classification in our psychology will now pro- 
ceed under quite other divisions of the feelings. Without 
particular regard to the above discriminations, any further than 
the obvious propriety of applying terms according to distinctly 
apprehended meanings, the susceptibihty will be analyzed, 
according to the permanent capacities in human nature, in 
which it has its distinctive exercises. Man participates in a 
sentient, psychical, and rational existence, and thus his suscep- 
tibility will have its corresponding modifications. There will 
consequently be occasion for the distinctions of the Sentieni, 
the Psychical, and the Rational susceptibility, for each of which 
there will be the need of its own distinctive chapter. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE SENTIENT SUSCEPTIBILITY. 

Life begins its manifestation with the interaction of spon- 
taneity, and mechanical forces. The living spontaneity puts 
carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen in chemical combina- 
tion, and thereby constructs the varied organisms of the vege- 
table kingdom. But in all plant life there is the absence of all 



I40 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

cognition and so also of all feding, and the entire realm is but 
instinctively ordered. A sentiency is superinduced, and the 
animal kingdom has its sentient organisms constructed by a 
higher instinct, which, in the use of such sentient organisms, 
rises to conscious perception and observation, and finds beneath 
the sense-cognition the susceptibility also to sentient feeling. 
As the organism is from the superinduced sentiency, and the 
susceptibility is thereby instinctively originated, so this suscep- 
tibility will begin in instinct, the feehngs will be constitutionally 
conditioned, and the sentient activity will flow from the cogni- 
tions in the ordered successions of conditioned cause and effect. 
Inasmuch as the man is sentient, by so much must he be con- 
ditioned to come up through instinct into conscious knowing, 
feeling, and action, and as sentient to participate in all the 
restrictions as well as the super-inductions of his animal organ- 
ism. All our emotive capacity waits upon our intellectual 
capacity. Only as the intellect is aroused and goes out into 
specific acts of knowing, can our emotive nature be excited and 
go out in specific acts of feeling. Antecedently to all self-con- 
sciousness, the knowing and the feeling are confusedly blended 
together, and the mind has in this state no capacity to any 
distinct emotion. The one mind becomes capacity for feeling, 
by spontaneously producing itself into an emotive state. It is 
thus a susceptibility; a capacity for taking feeling, under the 
inspiration of the intellect. 

Inasmuch as man has an extended intellectual capacity, so 
his capacity for feeling may be extended, and all varieties of 
knowing must give their modifications of feeling. While, there- 
fore, the human intellect operates in higher and wider spheres 
than the sentiency, and thus has a susceptibility proportionally 
elevated, there is also a sphere of knowing common to both 
man and brute, and, in this particular, a sphere of feeling that 
is to each the same. Whatever may be the greater clearness 
and completeness of knowledge in the same field, this will not 



THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. I4I 

modify the feeling to make it different in kind, but only varying 
in degree. In the man, it will still be sentient feeling, and so 
far as the feeHng waits upon the knowledge given in sense, this 
will bring no prerogative to- the human susceptibility. Here is, 
thus, the lowest form in which the human susceptibility develops 
itself in specific feehngs, and yet a form completely and per- 
manently distinct from that which originates in man's higher 
rational being. The importance of this division in our classi- 
fication is in the fact, that there is this inherent and lasting 
distinction in human feehng, separating the sentient or animal 
feelings from all others in our experience. The Sentient Sus- 
ceptibility is the capacity fo7' feeling which has its source in our 
sentient constitution. 

The exercise of this susceptibility must be in such feelings 
only as terminate in the sense, and can never transcend the 
limits of the natural world. Confined to the sphere of the 
sentient constitution, all .the feelings are impulsive and transi- 
tory, coming and departing with the impressions made upon 
our constitutional organization. They are thus desultory and 
involuntary, and can be restrained only by reciprocal counter- 
action ; the agent is controlled only by setting one opposing 
feeling over against another, and repressing strong desire only 
by strong fear. In all the working of this susceptibility, man 
is only animal, though from the completeness of constitutional 
organization, an animal of the highest grade. 

The feelings of the sentient susceptibiHty may be arranged 
under the following sections : — 

Section I. : The Instincts. The lowest form of mental 
excitement is found in organic sensation, which is induced 
by some impression made upon the organism. It must pre- 
cede, and is conditional for, an awakening in self-consciousness. 
In mere organic sensation, the intellectual and the sentient are 
both present, for the impression gives its affection to the mind 
itself through the sensorium; but they are present as wholly 



142 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

indiscriminate, and therefore neither as distinct knowledge nor 
distinct feeling. We recognize the whole, not in conscious- 
ness but only in speculation, and can apprehend the sensations 
only as mental facts of knowing and feehng, in their confused 
and chaotic being. The intellectual agency, as defining and 
distinguishing, must move over this chaos, before it can be 
brought out in clear form. 

But precisely in this state of undiscriminated mental feeling 
there is an inherent urgency to action in a determinate direction. 
The feeling has its own congeniality to certain ends and objects, 
and thus spontaneously goes out under the determination of 
this attractiveness to its object. The sense guides itself, by its 
innate adaptedness to certain ends, and thus acts directly 
towards its congenial objects, before the mind can discriminate 
these objects in consciousness, and guide itself to them in its 
own light. The reptile turning under the tread ; the young of 
animals or man clinging to the breast ; the adult just rousing 
from a sleep or a swoon, are all illustrations of the impulsive 
nature of instinctive feeling. It has many degrees of obscurity 
from its darkest stragglings up to its half-conscious agency, but 
whether in man or animal, it is everywhere, so far as it is 
instinctive feeling, the constituted congeniality and adaptedness 
of the sensation to its given result, and thus an impulsive work- 
ing to its end in the absence of self-consciousness. All its 
promptings are of blind sensation, and are determined in their 
intensity and direction, solely from the urgency of an intrinsic 
congeniality in the sensation to the end induced. What is 
meant by the instinct is, not the affection in the organ, but that 
congeniality or attractiveness in the sensation towards the end, 
which at once gives the urgency in that direction. Hunger in 
the infant and the adult may be the same sensation ; but in the 
infant there is an instinctive prompting to the object of gratifi- 
cation, which is wholly lost in the direction that the light of 
consciousness gives to the adult. The migrating bird not only 



THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. I43 

feels the air in which it moves, but this sensation has its want 
urging towards the warm gales of the south, when the rigors of 
winter are approaching. 

Section II. : Affections in the Organism. The animal 
organism is a combination of material forces put together by 
the living spontaneity, with a sentiency superinduced upon the 
mere plant organism, and though this mechanical matter is in 
accordant correspondence with the living spontaneity, yet is it 
but a coarse and rough element for assimilation in the human 
body, and must give frequent occasion for disorder and disease 
by its chafing collisions. The man who best knows his own 
organism will most clearly recognize his susceptibility to 
uncomfortable experiences. 

When in its fresh and healthy condition, vivacious and vigor- 
ous, the feeling will be of an indefinite glow of animation or 
exhilaration, and this not seldom exchanged for weakness, 
weariness, and lingering sickness. But the deepest feeling 
above the instincts is the recurrence of sharp pains in some 
smitten portion of the body. In the time of fierce distress the 
urgency is for immediate relief, and the resort is had to any 
sedatives or opiates at hand, leaving more curative remedies 
to be applied when the intolerable agony has been soothed. 
Every human organism is any hour exposed to sudden anguish 
from sudden assaults quite unanticipated. 

The afferent nerves communicate with the outer world at 
every point of the surface, and thus all varieties of temperature 
and all changes in contact are perpetually modifying the bodily 
sensations, and the organism is susceptible of new feelings 
every hour. 

Section III. : The Appetites. When any constitutional 
sensation is awakened, and the instinctive urgency which deter- 
mines it towards its end has passed away, — since by contact 
with the outer world the man has become cognizant of his own 
organism, — there will yet be feehngs seeking their end but now 



144 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

looking to cognitions for their guidance. A feeling of this sort 
is properly termed an appetite. It is often expressed as a long- 
ing after its end, and this is only descriptive of the feeling, as 
if in its seeking it elongated itself in the direction towards its 
object. 

There are some sensations which seem eminently to have 
this appetency to a particular end, and which are thus more 
emphatically termed appetites, as hunger and thirst. In a 
peculiar state of the great organ of digestion, when the stomach 
is empty of food, there is induced a peculiar sensation common 
to all animal being, which at once seeks for some congenial 
object to relieve it. This is known as hunger, when the 
stomach is empty of food ; or as thirst, when destitute of drink ; 
and these seekings or longings in hunger and thirst are emi- 
nently appetites. But all other constitutional sensations, which 
go forth in longing for some congenial end, are equally appe- 
tites, and belong here to this division of the sentient suscep- 
tibility. The sensation of fatigue, which longs for rest ; of 
protracted wakefulness, which longs for sleep ; the longing for 
health in sickness, and for buoyant spirits in nervous dejection ; 
the going forth of animal inclination between the sexes; and 
the longing for a shade from the heat, and for a covering from 
the cold ; these are all sensations seeking for gratification, and 
are as truly appetites, as are hunger and thirst. To these 
should also be added the longings which go out for gratification 
in the sensations of all other organs. The eye and the ear, the 
smell, the taste and touch, give sensations that long for gratifi- 
cation as truly as the uneasiness of an empty stomach, and as 
thus truly appetitive, the seeking feeling should, in each case, 
be known as an appetite. 

When the experience has tried the particular object that grati- 
fies the longing for relief, and thus the sensation now goes out 
specifically for a particular object of known gratification, the 
appetite is then lost in a desire, and the general seeking or 



THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. I45 

longing for relief becomes the direct craving for a distinct grati- 
fication. This may also be so agitated by the sudden presenta- 
tion of the object that the desire or inclination goes out furious 
and frenzied in enjoyment, and in tliis hurried rush of feehng 
the desire becomes a passion. The appetites may thus readily 
be raised to desires, and these excited into passions ; but 
through all these forms of seeking their objects, they are still 
sentient feeling only, and exist in brute and man of the same 
kind, however they may be modified in forms or degrees. It 
should also be noted that the appetites are nearly allied to the 
instincts, diifering from them only in rising to the hght of 
self-Consciousness, and thus liable to sink back again to a mere 
instinctive impulse, when an absorbtion in the pleasure of grati- 
fication so far obscures the discriminations of self-consciousness. 
An animal and a man may be so intent in gratifying appetite, 
and so absorbed in the pleasure, as to lose all consciousness of 
what is about them, and what they are ; and thus absorbed, 
their gratification is as instinctive as that_of the infant at the 
breast. 

The opposite feelings to appetite, as loathing or satiety, need 
not be particularly considered, inasmuch as they follow the same 
laws, and are subject to the same determinations, except as 
throughout they are the converse of the former. 

Section IV. : Natural Affections. There is a love which 
is solely pathological, originating in constitutional nature, and 
determined in its action and direction by an innate propensity. 
Such an inclination differs wholly from that spiritual affection 
which appropriates its object freely, and strikes its root deeply 
in the moral disposition. Of this last we shall speak fully 
farther on, but of the former only are we now concerned to 
attain an adequate conception. 

There is in the parent a deep propensity to an anxious and 
watchful sohcitude for the welfare of the child. This is strong- 
est in the breast of the mother, and though the most tender and 



146 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

wakeful towards the child in infancy, yet is it perpetuated 
through all stages of experience until death. A benevolent pro- 
vision is in this made for the care and nurture of the child in its 
helplessness, far more effective than any governmental regula- 
tions could secure. The strength and tenderness of maternal 
love may be regulated and elevated by moral and religious con- 
siderations, and thus come to partake of the characteristics of 
a virtue, but in so far as any such considerations mingle, they 
are wholly foreign to the maternal inclination as here contem- 
plated. The whole feeling is that of nature, and to be destitute 
of it, in the case of any mother, is to be simply unnatural. The 
inclination of the father towards his child finds its origin also in 
a natural propensity, but its strength and constancy depend 
mainly upon the action of connubial love. If the mother be 
not herself loved, the love of the father to his children will be 
easily overborne by opposing considerations. In lawful and 
affectionate wedlock the natural regard for the offspring is 
secured perpetual and active in both the parents. It is useless 
to inquire for any parental instinct, by which natural affection 
might be directed to a child not otherwise known ; for one con- 
dition of natural parental affection is that the child be not only 
the parent's own, but known to be so. That the mother deems 
the child to be her own is a necessary, and the sufficient condi- 
tion, that her love should go out towards it. 

This love is strongest in the parents ; reciprocated in the 
children towards the parents ; mutually directed towards each 
as brothers and sisters ; and extended to all the kindred, in 
modified degrees, according to nearness of relationship and cir- 
cumstances of communion. Nature itself prompts to com- 
munion, as occasion may offer, through all the family circle ; but 
if circumstances prevent all intercourse, the ties of natural 
affection become thereby much weakened. In the mere animal 
the maternal solicitude appears, occasionally connected with 
that of the male where they procreate in pairs, but continued 



THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. I47 

only during the helplessness and dependence of the young, and 
lost when they are competent to provide for themselves. It is 
because man can trace the hues of kindred descent, and diffuse 
his communion through all the circle, that he comes to perpet- 
uate and extend his family affections beyond those of the mere 
animal. The occasion for their exercise and cultivation is thus 
given in man's higher endowments ; but the source of natural 
affection, in man as in brutes, is solely in constitutional pa- 
thology. It is nearly alHed to the appetites. The feeling has 
its intrinsic congeniality with its object and adaptation to its end, 
and thus seeks its object as an appetite ; but it differs both from 
ah appetite and a desire, in that it seeks its object for the object's 
sake, and not that it may absorb it into its own interests. It is 
not merely an incHnation, as tending towards, that it may con- 
nect itself with, the object ; but it incHnes toward the object 
solely that it may subserve its welfare. It is thus an affection, 
but as merely pathological, and finding its whole propensity in 
constitutional nature, it is natural affection only. 

Section V. : Self-interested Feelings. An appetite seeks 
its end in gratification, and a desire craves its object that it may 
fill itself with it ; but in distinct cognition, I may come to appre- 
ciate any object solely in the use I may make of it for my 
happiness. I contemplate myself as a creature of appetites and 
desires, and the objects which my appetites seek and my desires 
crave I contemplate, simply as ministering to my happiness in 
gratifying these appetites and desires ; and with the objects 
turned towards me in such an aspect, a large variety of feelings 
may be induced, all of which will agree in this, that they wholly 
terminate in my own interest. The feelings here contemplated 
will not go out direct towards any object, but will all be reflex 
upon the self, and terminate solely in self-interest. They will 
be impossible to him who could not contemplate himself aside 
from his desires, and estimate his very desires and their objects 
as the means of so much self-enjoyment. 



148 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

Thus I shall have the feeHng of joy in the possession of such 
desires and their objects, for the sake of my happiness, and not 
for the object's sake. In the loss of such objects I shall feel 
grief, not on their account, but my own. The feehngs here will 
be mainly emotions, excited in reference to my own immediate 
interests in the objects. Joy in the prospect of possessing, and 
grief in the danger of losing ; hope and fear ; pride and shame ; 
tranquility and anxiety ; animation and despondency ; patience 
and perplexity, all may be awakened as I am made to view 
objects in their varied relations to my own interest. 

Here also come in all the feelings connected with the acqui- 
sition and possession of property. All objects that minister to 
my wants touch at once the feeling of self-interest, and excite 
the propensity to get and retain for future use. As it is my 
enjoyment which is to be secured, so the objects must be in my 
possession, and my right to them capable of being defended 
against the claims of any others. An immoderate anxiety in 
securing such possessions is the feeling of covetousness, and an 
immoderate eagerness to hoard them is the feeling of avarice. 
If this goes so far as to deny itself the enjoyment of the use, 
and makes mere accumulation the end, the feeling then becomes 
the passion of avarice, inasmuch as the incHnation to hoard is 
disturbed, and perverted from its end. When money, or that 
which may be exchanged for the objects that may minister to 
our enjoyment, is accumulated, we have the secondary or 
derived feelings, which regard the possessions not in themselves, 
but in their relative bearing upon such as we may want and may 
by their means attain. There may also be a complete passing 
over of the feeling to the simple object of exchange, and in the 
perturbation of the passion, that thing be hoarded for itself. 
So the miser trajisfers his feeling from the objects of gratifica- 
tion the money might get, to the money itself, and refuses all 
use not only, but all accumulation of anything but hard specie. 

Here, also, are found the feelings which originate in an antici- 



THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. I49 

pation of consequences. Experience abundantly teaches both 
man and animals, that certain present gratifications of appetite 
are followed by greater coming -evil. They learn by experience 
to avoid certain practices, that would in themselves be agree- 
able, since, from the past, they know how to anticipate the 
future consequences. Such a deducing of prudential consid- 
erations, from the generalization of experience, very much 
modifies the feelings. Present desire is suppressed, and a prov- 
ident foresight awakens new inclinations. The feelings of self- 
interest are addressed from a new quarter, and the judgment of 
an understanding- according to sense is made a strong means 
for exciting the susceptibiHty. The man may take into his 
estimate a far broader field of experience, and deduce a much 
wider series of consequential results, than the animal ; but the 
intellectual operation is the same in kind, and the prudential 
feeling is of the same order in both. It is solely sentient feel- 
ing awakened by calculations from animal experience, and 
prompts to action in the end of self-interest only. Mere pru- 
dential claims never reach those emotions which are stirred 
by the authority of a moral imperative. There may be the 
gladness of success, or the regret of failure ; the gratulation of 
prudent management, or the self-reproach of improvidence ; 
but there can never be the moral emotions of an excusing or 
an accusing conscience. 

From considerations of self-interest there also arise the many 
painful and dissocial feelings, which are directed against what- 
ever is supposed to interfere with self- enjoyment. Envy and 
jealousy, hatred and malice, anger and revenge, are all aroused 
amid the collisions of opposing interests. These may all become 
vices from their connection with an evil will, but the animal 
nature alone has within it the spring to all such naturally selfish 
emotions. 

Section VI. : Disinterested Feelings. There is in human 
nature a strong propensity to society. A psychical and rational 



150 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

susceptibility elevates to social communion in much higher 
spheres, qualifying for scientific, moral, and religious inter- 
course ; but the yearnings of the sentiency itself are for com- 
pany and fellowship with those of its kind. Brutes are more or 
less gregarious, and even the animals that live mostly in soli- 
tude seem to be forced to this isolation from the scarcity of 
their prey or the necessity of their hiding-places. This social 
propensity stands connected with many feelings which find their 
end in the welfare of others, and that have no reflex action and 
termination in self. Inasmuch as they refer to the interests of 
others, and are exclusive of self-interest, they may be termed 
the disinterested feelings. The self is gratified in their exercise, 
inasmuch as it is so constituted that it enjoys the play of these 
emotions for others ; but the end of the feeling is in others, 
not in self, and it thus comes in as one of its own enjoyments, 
that it should feel for its fellows. 

Here are found all -the natural sympathies of our nature. 
Other men have all the varied feelings which belong to our own 
experience, and the witness of these feelings in others naturally 
enkindles a kindred feeling in ourselves. Except as the selfish 
feelings have been allowed to predominate, and thus to repress 
our disinterested emotions, we shall naturally rejoice with the 
joyous, and weep with the weeping. According to the varied 
experience of our fellow-men our own emotiohs will be excited ; 
and we shall feel pity or fellow-pleasure, condolence or con- 
gratulation, just as we see others to be affected. Such animal 
sympathies extend to all sentient being, and the happiness or 
suffering of the brute creation strongly affects the susceptibility 
of man. Even animals themselves deeply participate in these 
sympathies, and are moved by the glad sounds or the cries of 
other animals. There is often a quick sensibility in very 
immoral men, and the natural sympathies of some good men 
are slow to be aroused ; and thus quite aside from all moral 
disposition the natural feelings of men may render some far 



THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. I5I 

more amiable than others, just as some animals may enlist our 
sympathies much more strongly than others. 

The disinterested feeHngs may be modified by anticipated 
consequences, in the same way as before of the self-interested 
feelings. Experience may teach as plainly what is best for 
others, as what is most prudent for myself; and this general 
consideration of consequences will at once awaken its peculiar 
feelings in reference to others on whom the consequences are 
to come. All the feelings of kindness, or natural benevolence 
and philanthropy, are here exhibited. 

They prompt to the denial of self-gratification for the happi- 
ness of others ; or rather, these disinterested feelings make the 
man the most happy, when he is making others happy. The 
feeling is pathological only, and in its exercise the man is kind 
just as sometimes the brute is kind to his fellow ; and in this 
working of sentient sympathetic feeling many acts of self-denial 
will be put fortli, and human distress reheved, when the chari- 
table deed has in it nothing of ethical virtue, since even animals 
sometimes deny themselves for their kind and manifest natural 
kindness of feeling. In man disinterested feeling may be more 
comprehensive, and his calculation of consequences further 
extended for others' benefit, but in man as in the brute the 
whole is but the urgency of sentient susceptibility, and nature 
only, with nothing of moral character, must have all the credit 
for the kindness. 

The entire sentient susceptibility rests, thus, in present good, 
since it knows not whence the good comes nor whither it goeth. 
The feeling never transcends the cognition. 



152 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE PSYCHICAL SUSCEPTIBILITY. 

In the pysche cognition is quite considerably advanced beyond 
the sentiency, and thus the susceptibility is proportionately 
augmented. While the sentiency has the present in observation, 
and this gives its corresponding feeling in the underlying sentient 
susceptibility, the psyche has a retent of the past experience, 
from whose reflex inversion of plan in place and succession in 
period, it may make re-collections to any extent, and test these 
in their reality by any amount of careful repetitions. These 
re-collections may then be put in their precise conceptions, and 
ranged in formal judgments, and then carried to their deductive 
conclusions in logical syllogisms. Under all these logical pro- 
cesses there come the respective understanding cognitions, and 
under the varied cognitions stand also their respectively varied 
susceptibilities, each giving its certain occasion for its certainly 
conditioned feeling. We give an outline of these, sufficiently 
explicit and detailed to render the whole field of psychical expe- 
rience in feeling as exact and clear in its reality, as in the 
intellect it has already been done for the psychical experience in 
knowing. The feeling in this field waits on the knowing as 
determinately as we have just found it doing in the field of the 
sentient susceptibility. 

Section I. : The Pleasures and Pains of Memory. The 
sentient animal has his memory, and in some exceptional cases, 
as the dog and the fox, he recalls the past so clearly and 
correctly for short periods, that what seem to be his judgments 
according to sense-observation are often surprisingly sharp, and 
his susceptibility to feeling and action manifest cunning and 
skill wonderfully approaching toward human calculation and 



THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. 1 53 

practice. But no animal has the psychical reflex of past obser- 
vation, in its plan of place and period, as is given to ' man in 
his understanding-consciousness; and hence no brute can be 
cultivated to the capability of managing and applying scientific 
experiment to the test of his remembrances, and then putting 
under them a susceptibility to intellectual interest and feeling, 
as is so ready to be accomplished by man. The first step 
onward in this process to scientific attainment of cognition and 
psychical susceptibility in man is in the pleasant and sad feelings 
which he derives from his recollections. Man, as no animal has 
the faculty to do, can recall past scenes, of more or less extent 
of place and period, and take them in their relation to his hfe- 
long experience ; and, with each commingling its interest in all, 
the one life becomes a checkered experience of varied cognitions 
and emotions, which not only no animal, but no other man than 
himself, can have in contemplation, and to whose blended joys 
and sorrows no other man can be susceptible. While youth is 
habitually anticipative, the aged come more and more to live in 
the past, and the one life becomes the more rich although it is 
the more solitary. For one who has lived long, his psychical 
retention of all his past experience is the biography of deeper 
meaning and interest than that which any other man will be able 
to write for or of him. 

And just in this psychical recognition of the past is the capa- 
bility for any man to write or criticize any already written biog- 
raphy. The reflex attitude of all that has gone before, as it 
stands in the recollected consciousness, must be the point of 
view for every writer, reader, and reviewer of biographic litera- 
ture. Every part stands in place and period related to every 
other part, and only in its exact collocations and concurrences 
can there be extracted any meaning, any interest, or any instruc- 
tion. And just t^us with the history of any age, or nation, or 
with the universal history of man and of nature ; each and all 
must have its one conscious plot of psychical connection in 



154 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

time, place, and circumstance, with which every place, and 
period, and conjmict transaction, must have its correspondent 
consistency. No history quickens the interest of any suscepti- 
bility but in the clear cognition of its events in their cognate 
places and periods relative to the entire record of the transac- 
tions. That man has a psychical susceptibihty is his one 
prerogative for a capability either to write, read, or find interest 
in any history. 

Section II. : Interest in Scientific Classification. Facts 
of experience may be sorted according to cognition of likeness 
and difference, and be thus scientifically classified, and such 
classified arrangement of human knowledge is a very consider- 
able portion of the work of science itself. To a large extent 
such classification has already been accomplished, and the re- 
sulting cognition finds beneath it a susceptibility quickened into 
deeply interested emotion. That experience admits of such 
orderly classification, and that the psychical faculty correspond- 
ingly attains it, may well excite a delighted attention. Every 
individual fact, dropping its peculiarities, is held in its species, 
and then the specific differences are lost in the genus ; those of 
the genus fall out in the order ; those of the order again pass 
away, and the assortment is held in the class ; and then these 
assorted arrangements run through the mineral, vegetable, and 
animal kingdoms, all finding man in his psychical understanding 
crowning the whole, and holding in his reflex retent the exacdy 
arranged catalogue. All this should not be fairly recognised 
otherwise than with grateful admiration. It would be unmanly 
stupidity to find all this done for us, and we not to wonder and 
to praise. 

But the susceptible feeling must not transcend the tried cog- 
nition. Hitherto all testing experiment shows that the transi- 
tions from species to the higher genera are very unequal, some 
closely succeeding and others widely severed, so that quite large 
leaps must be made and broad gaps left open in the classifying 



THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. 155 

process. A presupposition of long eras intervening, in which 
the missing links were all supplied, but have since become ex- 
tinct, and their fossil remains have also perished, will be utterly 
inadmissible for a truly scientific interest. Scientific interest 
rests only in tested facts, and until these fill the chasms, no sup- 
position however plausible can render science any assistance in 
leaping the gaps which are thus left open. 

Beside the psychical interest in tried scientific classifications, 
there is much pleasant feehng derived from classifications for 
convenience, or utihty, or amusement. The psychical faculty is 
largely active in arranging objects of all varieties and uses sim- 
ply in accord with temporary conditions and circumstances. 
And many an uneasy mind finds quiet satisfaction in putting 
things together in places, and classes, and sorted arrangements 
from considerations of very trivial importance. They are as 
really settled in their arrangement by the psychical faculty as 
when it works by careful experiment, and in the aggregate the 
amount of pleasant and restful interest thus found is quite incal- 
culable j all, however, to be credited to the psychical suscepti- 
bility we are now considering. But all, the more as the less 
important, are found to prove more or less unsteady and unsat- 
isfactory ; domestic arrangements, home conveniences, business 
employments, and social attachments all take on other forms, 
some gradually, some capriciously, some from a more cultivated 
experience, while some hold on from year to year by the mere 
conservation of habit. The understanding has only what has 
been for its directory. 

Section III. : Interest in Theoretic Investigations. The 
field of the psychical consciousness is solely the reflex of past 
observation, and for the psyche the ultimate standard is the 
tested stability of experience. What things have had a uniform 
collocation of properties and an invariable order of changes are 
the sufficient data for the deduction that such uniformity and 
invariability for the like things will continue in the future. The 



156 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

antecedents are taken as causes for the consequents, not on 
account of any cognition the psyche can attain that there is any 
efficiency in the antecedent, and only on account of the infalK- 
bility of the facts in the past. The psyche, as such, cannot have 
its susceptibility affected by any feeling from the cognition of 
cause, further than the precise cognition that this antecedent 
lias been ever in such an order to such a consequent. 

Here, then, is the occasion for theoretically interested feeling. 
We settle what will be from the order of what has been. We 
lay down the tried fact as a theory, and when the consequent is 
deduced as sure, the susceptibihty is interested at once, is curi- 
ous to see the event if not quite satisfied, and is calm and confi- 
dent in feehng when conviction is scientifically settled. Hence 
the interest in theoretic disquisition ; every man is fixing his 
theory according to the conviction attained at his standpoint, 
and is susceptible to feeling just as his psychical capability of 
cognizing has prepared for him. He will be curious, or skepti- 
cal, or confident, and will therefore feel just as his knowledge 
permits that he should. 

Up to this point we have been able to keep up a pretty steady 
conviction for the stability of science on the ground of trying 
over old experience by new and more careful experiment. We 
have rested in this test of scientific carefulness upon due repeti- 
tion of the new trials. But this stage of examination into the 
feelings of the psychical susceptibility begins to trouble us. 
There are so many theories, and on important interests, and by 
so many apparently competent judges, and yet so diverse, and 
perhaps most of them so sanguine and earnest, that we begin to 
question to what issue we are coming. All are earnest and 
many are honest for the truth, but how various ! What is truth? 
Quite different theories are held of family regulation, of civil 
government, of ecclesiastical polity, of the origin of religion, 
and the truth of it in its very nature. These theories have their 
respective susceptibilities, the feelings of which are not appetites, 



THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. 157 

nor sympathies, nor desires, nor passions, but are by eminence 
sentiments, such as love of home, patriotism, churcli fellowship, 
etc. These are excited in the susceptibihties by the interests 
involved in the recognized institutions and their established 
regulations, and the institutions to which these sentiments relate 
are the most prominent and important concerning which any 
theories can be formed. 

There may, moreover, be speculative theories in reference to 
the standard of judging and the estimates attained concerning 
many practices in social intercourse and the business of life, 
wherein the transactions themselves give character to the actors ; 
such as matters of policy, prudence, economy, honor and hon- 
esty, friendship, philanthropy, charity, and even the wide field 
of virtuous sentiment that lies under the sanctity of the mar- 
riage bond. Science is testing all these important matters, and 
with a freedom and earnestness and boldness which give assur- 
ance that it means to see the end. What is to be the ultimate 
outcome? Just here the susceptibility to feeling is very dif- 
ferent in different minds, but assuredly in all, the susceptibility 
is precisely as the intellectual capability fits them for, and deter- 
mines them to possess. The psychical faculty is therefore itself 
first to be tested before it may be made the test of ultimate 
convictions. We are really now at the very point in our psy- 
chology where we may get an enlightened view of just what the 
psychical susceptibility is competent to feel. 

Section IV. : How far Sentiment is valid in Abstract 
Logic. In abstract logic, or the logic of permanent concep- 
tions, the abstraction may legitimately be carried to the highest 
class that has scientific reality. Thus, we may abstract a con- 
ception exclusive of all real empirical species, then in the same 
way another exclusive of all genera, then of all orders, and then 
of all classes in like manner in every kingdom save the class of 
humanity, and the abstract conception will then be that of man 
in common j and this may further be abstracted by leaving out 



158 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

all human properties save the highest faculty of the psyche, as 
we here hold it in cognition. This last and highest abstraction 
that we can make where we now stand, will extend to all that 
has been excluded, and will be a conception to which the exclu- 
sives will all be auxihary. The abstract conception would be 
voucher for their reality, and they, and only they, would just 
fill the abstraction and give meaning to the conception. This 
highest psychical conception would be a valid basis for a 
theory of family economy, or social community, or state sov- 
reignty, as elevated as a psychical faculty can conceive, and 
beneath this there may be a psychical susceptibility with as 
pure and warm feeling of domestic affection, or social philan- 
thropy, or patriotic integrity, as a human understanding can 
think. But the conception could give occasion for no higher 
sentiments. From nothing here recognized could there be a 
susceptibility for Christian fellowship or religious devotion. A 
higher faculty must open the way for the sentiments of religious 
unity and divine worship. 

It is also further quite conclusive that no imagined series and 
degree of abstraction and generalization can be scientifically 
tolerated. We might suppose species and genera so close in 
order that there shall be no gap throughout, or that there be an 
imagined ascent to pure being, as an abstraction extending to all 
possible being, but this could in no case have any scientific value, 
nor quicken any interest of real sentiment in a susceptibility 
earnest only for true feehng. No matter what imagination may 
invent or picture, if a testing experiment cannot be made to try 
and sustain the theory and the sentiment, all else is utterly 
impertinent. 

Section V. : How far Interest ]\iay be sustained in the 
Logic of Changing Conceptions. Quality may be definite and 
pass beyond its limits and become quantity, and the definite 
quantum may be extensive or intensive and specific, and the 
specific may qualify the extensive at a determinate rate in a 



THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. 159 

given measure and there change the old quality to another 
conception, and the essence passing the measure may in similar 
modes be further qualified and changed till the essence shall 
pass on into the measureless, and thus beyond observation. 
There will, in such process, be logical occasion for theories of 
objective substance and properties, cause and effect, action and 
reaction; and under these recognized theories there will be 
susceptibilities open to deeply interested feelings both in refer- 
ence to practical and scientific issues. Since, however, the 
process of qualifying, and thus of changing the conceptions 
through the intervention of specific quantities, begins with 
mechanical forces working material changes, we are checked in 
the course long before we get to any experiments with living 
spontaneities. The levities working with and in the gravities 
and pushing on with polarities and chemical equivalents and 
affinities, come to a terminus in a dead-lock before living spon- 
taneity begins its perpetuated assimilations and reproductions ; 
and then there comes the death of living individual organisms 
before there is any experience of mental action and psychical 
intelligence. 

The matters change, but as their essence, even when it has 
passed away from sense-perception into the measureless internal 
of the understanding, is still material and mechanical only, and 
as we are obliged to think it as still in a resisting antagonism 
that must soHdly block or diremptively explode, the pleased 
interest passes away into the torpor of inertia or the shock of a 
catastrophe. 

If we attempt to make the mechanical pass over into the vital, 
and then into the psychical by an assumed or presupposed 
generic process, and then force the psychic into union with the 
thinking as its auxiliary, and make the two to be rational actuality, 
we still only open the way to an interminable idealism. We 
shall by no possible method of working the internal essence 
through any continual process of change in specific quantity to 



l60 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

higher and richer quahty, gain an entrance into absolute art, 
rehgion, and philosophy, that will admit an applied test of 
scientific experiment. 

Section VI. : Interested Feeling in the Logic of Living 
Spontaneity. The two preceding theories of logical connec- 
tions lose much of their former interest, since they are now 
found to fail completely, from their inherent incompatibility with 
the requirement of a continued process. They shut themselves 
up by their own action ; the abstract logic by its unavailing gen- 
eralization, since its highest abstraction must be mere surface, 
having outside only, the changing logic by its ultimate dead- 
lock or breaking up in fragments. They cannot be used for a 
completion of empirical science in an exact system, for the 
former cannot stop its perpetual repetitions, and the latter can- 
not perpetuate them far enough. We must perforce withdraw 
all confidence in them as competent scientific instrumentalities. 
We can use only this last logic of spontaneous life, and shall 
not find any theory beyond it, and we wish here to see just 
what interest it is susceptible of imparting. 

We have found it in tested experiment, actually connecting 
common experience through all the species and genera of the 
three classified kingdoms, the mineral, vegetable, and animal, 
and then lifting science up into the sphere of the human psyche, 
and leaving both the beginning and terminating ends of its 
process fully open for either further progress or regress. The 
conception is peculiar, being two-sided, one the complement 
of the other, and neither of any signification except in the 
fellowship of both. One side is the material chemical equiva- 
lents of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen, and the other 
side is the living spontaneity, and while ordinary chemical 
action is binary, this living chemistry, sometimes in ternary and 
often quaternary combination, builds up its organisms, maturing 
the individuals and reproducing their kind through coming 
generations. Testing experiment finds the work done in con- 



THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. l6l 

necting mechanical matter with plant life, then in sentiency with 
animal life, and then in psychical intelligence with human life. 
We know matter, and instinct, and sentiency, and the human 
psyche to have their connections, though no testing experi- 
ments can show whence either the mechanism, or the spon- 
taneous instinct, or the sentient, or the psychical activity may 
originate. We well know these facts, and that they so occur in 
concert and co-agency that there is no hindrance to their 
ongoing, nor opportunity for questioning that they may have 
been indefinitely foregoing. Common experience is thus classi- 
fied through its whole occurrence within human reach, and all is 
open to further foreknowledge and coming knowledge. Thus 
while theoretically nothing more is needed, under such a theory 
there is the susceptibility for the strongest confidence and the 
deepest interest that thought can give or the psychical under- 
standing can receive. The psyche is in its nature held within 
the reflex of the past, and its feehng cannot transcend this. 

But while this is all the understanding can ask, and all that 
science can get or give, it is not all that humanity seeks, nor all 
that humanity needs. With so much only, the door is forever 
shut against all cognition of the source of experience. Whence 
come matter, life, sense, thought, and whereunto are they to go ? 
Man knows that he has a susceptibility for feeling which lies far 
beyond the range of these psychical theories and the cognitions 
they can gain, and he has the irrepressible conviction, that if 
this is all that he can know and all that he may interest himself 
in and with, it would have been better for him that he had not 
known so much. To stop here is to smother within him his 
higher and better aspirations, and he knows that this he cannot 
content himself to do, and even more, that he ought not to 
allow that such a claim can righteously be made upon him. 
His very being is a cheat and a delusion if he have not truly 
within him another and higher faculty which is urging these 
aspirings, and which may help to answer them. As we have 



l62 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

already found in the intellect the reason beyond the sense and 
understanding, so we now find in the susceptibility the discon- 
tented struggle to reach higher interests and sentiments than 
merely logical theories and thoughts can gain, and we need but 
to bring the susceptibihty under this higher light of reason, in 
order to at once find the higher feeling awakened and the high- 
er sentiments glowing within us. There is a higher sphere of 
feehng as well as of knowing in man's endowment of reason. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE RATIONAL SUSCEPTIBILITY. 

We have already found the Reason as the highest intellectual 
faculty which, beyond all psychical deductions from facts, can 
make a valid induction of antecedent efficient causes in order 
that such facts themselves might thus exist. And here, as in 
both the sentient and the psychical susceptibilities, the same 
law prevails, that the cognitions have under them a suscepti- 
bility to feehng corresponding in elevation to their own impor- 
tance. We shall find four sorts of such feelings varying as do 
the cognitions which respectively awake them. 

Section I. : Esthetic Emotions. In all visually observed 
objects rays of light have passed into the eye, and the colors 
have been defined, distinguished, and united, and the meaning 
of the collocation of colors, with their figure, has been conse- 
quently obtained. So also in all audibly observed objects, waves 
of air have passed into the ear, and the sounds have been in 
like manner attentively defined, distinguished, and united, and 
the meaning of the collocation of sounds comes in consequence 
of the sense-construction. And then, when the sights and 
sounds h^ve passed from their presence in sense, and have 



THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. 163 

become the reflex retent of the past in remembrance, the 
understanding has re-collected them in their logical order, taken 
them in their conceptions, and gained their meaning in formal 
judgments in consequence. All the knowing has been the con- 
sequent of the previous transactions, and then these judgments 
in their meaning, as uniformly occurring in experience, are taken 
as the data for coming logical deductions. All is within, and 
since, and resulting from, the cognizing process. But just here 
the higher cognition of the reason comes in, and from the insight 
it has, by its superinduction upon them, of all the transactions 
within the sense and the understanding, it makes the authorita- 
tive induction that all this meaning must have been before, and 
must have come in through these ethereal and aerial vibrations 
which have respectively entered the visual and auditory organs. 
If these had not been exactly thus modified, their signification 
could not thus have been cognized. 

But this significant meaning only finds its place in aesthetic 
art as it carries with it some sentiment of deep interest to 
humanity, and as such sentiment also finds its expression in 
a pure form, attainable only through the etherial or aerial vibra- 
tions which are the media of communication for the visual or 
auditory organs. The touch may pass over the smoothest cabi- 
net hues or the softest velvet, and the running contact may be 
very clear and very agreeable, but the touch can get no senti- 
ment in recognition. The taste may have its genial sweetness 
or its gentle pungency, and much art may be expended in 
cuhnary delicacies, but it will reach no sentiment, and will 
at the best be merely useful and not ornamental; and, also, 
much care and skill may be exhausted in the preparation of 
costly and grateful perfumery, but no genial odors will carry in 
or with them any human sentiment. All other senses than those 
of sight and hearing are too clumsy and coarse for the employed 
instrumentality of the fine arts. The requisite pure forms can 
be transmitted only through the modified vibrations of light and 



164 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

air. Pure sentiment in pure form is, in some variety, the only 
recognized ingredient in sesthetics, and such sentiment can 
, only be an induction of the reason as precedent to and in order 
for the kindling of any aesthetic feehng. And this is just what 
the artist seeks when his genius is set to the creating work, and 
when he puts upon the least obtrusive material the fairest forms 
of the pure ideals which dawn upon him. The painter or the 
sculptor gets his clearest-cut outline and surface in picture and 
statue, and the musician his purest tones in exactly-uttered tune, 
in order that the beau ideal, as he beholds it, may truly and fully 
pass its way in the modified media to the recognizing organs, 
through which it first awakes the susceptibility to the conscious 
love of Beauty. This artist's creation is his perfected expression 
of the ideal, which, for him and for his admirers and critics, can 
have no recognition but in reason. The feeling induced is 
solely within the susceptibility that is under the cognition of 
reason, and is independent of sense-observation or reflective de- 
duction, except as the ideal form must be put on some material 
for its preservation and expression ; the ideal being valued and 
contemplated for its own sake, and not at all for its sense- 
embodiment, or for the attainment of any sentient interest. To 
possess and contemplate the ideal beauty in the insight of 
reason is full satisfaction, and to commingle with this the grati- 
fication of some lower appetite would degrade the beauty and 
debase the susceptibility and disgrace the rationality, as a pro- 
fane mixture. In the aesthetic sphere the pure ideal must be 
immovably at the centre. The common human mind may be 
cultivated to the attainment of this aesthetic taste, and especially 
the scientific mind may already have the dawn of such suscepti- 
bility to beauty, but the true appreciation comes only with the 
distinctive recognition and use of the supreme endowment of 
man with reason. 

Section II. : Philosophic Emotions. Human experience 
has been constant and long in its observation of the things and 



THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. 1 65 

their changes on earth, and of the luminous bodies and their 
movements in the heavens. .The senses have perceived their 
present forms and positions, and the remembrance has kept 
them reflected from the past and has re-collected them in the uni- 
form collocations and order of successions they have manifested, 
and from the invariable order of nature the deduction of the 
laws of nature has been made, and the ongoing of the future is 
to be empirically determined from the steadfast course of the 
past ; and though we can know nothing of the intrinsic efficien- 
cies in nature, the observed order of antecedent and consequent, 
as fact in experience, is itself to be taken as inflexible law of 
experience. 

But reason, superinduced upon sense-observation and logical 
re-collection, and with a clear insight of their working and result, 
has attained for itself not a contradictory but a higher and surer 
mode of cognition, determining that the order of nature's facts 
is regulated by antecedent causal efficiencies, and that the truth 
of nature's law is induced in what is already a sufficient cause for 
the fact, and can by no means have the authority of law when 
only known as deduced after the fact. In reason's insight the 
truth of sufficient cause in things on earth and in the heavens 
precedes the experience and is necessary in order to the expe- 
rience. The pure form and force of the true already is in the 
reason or it cannot come in the sense. 

The Earth with its place and relations in the planetary system 
has been found by carefully-repeated observation, and the forces 
and forms of the entire solar system as now recognized have in 
like manner been well ascertained. This has been by the organ 
of sight only, assisted by competent instruments. No other 
senses can have applied their ministrations. If there be the 
music of the spheres, the human ear has not had the recognition 
of it, and neither touch, taste, nor smell can have had any sub- 
serviency to this end. The sole media have been the variedly 
modified vibrations of rays of light to the eye and its responsive 



1 66 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

attention to and construction of the respective bodies, motions, 
places, and periodicities, wliile, by patient re-collection and 
reflective calculation of these retained observations in the under- 
standing, the forces and forms of the solar system, as facts in their 
order of experience, have been discovered. But the insight and 
oversight of reason, through and beyond all this transmission of 
modified ethereal vibration, admits of no question that these 
pure forms and forces already had their true being and gave 
their modifications to the transmitted light, or the receiving and 
attending organ could have attained no recognition of them. 
The reason has no deductions after the cognized facts, but it 
has an unhesitating induction of pure forms and forces ante- 
cedent to and causal for the observed experience. To the 
reason the true already was while the intermediary light was 
passing and the attending spontaneity was defining and uniting. 
Here then is more than any logic deducing from experience, 
even a rational philosophy that accounts for experience. The 
pure force and form the reason sees to be already, and under 
this capability of inductive cognizing is a susceptibility for 
deeper and purer emotion than any deductive cognition can 
supply. The pure force and form now are, and they also 
exactly concur and correspond with, the cognizing co-agency ; 
the objectively true and the subjective receiver of the true 
truly grasp and interclose each other, and the whole known 
truth is completely this, that in the reason the True both is 
and is fully cognized. And so the susceptibility here excited 
is adequate to the full feeling due to the highest interests of 
universal human experience. Here we have in view universal 
Nature and universal Humanity in their complemental integrity, 
each existing for the other and neither existing for an intelligible 
purpose without the other, but both together making the unity 
of all objective and subjective being, the known and the know- 
ing, and all in perfect consistency and correspondency. The 
feeHng induced is that which belongs to the highest Philosophy, 



THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. 167 

viz.^ the love of wisdom, or the love of the true. Nature and 
Man, when viewed in finite reason, make up a harmonious 
universaUty, with no other bond save only its eternal allegiance 
to the Absolute Reason. 

Section III. : Ethical Emotions. Man as sentient has 
appetites but no imperatives, and as psychical he has judgments 
and estimates, but no original rights. He knows the order of 
nature's changes,- but no claims of nature on him nor he on it. 
But Man endowed with reason has a quite different standing. 
The reason has an insight into itself, and knows itself, not rela- 
tively only as distinct from animal being, but directly and par- 
ticularly in its own prerogatives and capabilities. The spirit 
itself knoweth the things of the spirit ; its own spirituality, and 
in this its intrinsic dignity and excellency. In thus knowing 
itself, it knows what is due to itself; what it has an absolute 
right to claim from others, and what is the inherent behest of 
its own being that it should do for itself. Reason is thus ever 
autonomic ; carrying its own law within itself, and, from what it 
knows itself to be, reading its own law upon itself, and binding 
itself at all times to act worthy of itself. That it should in any 
way .deny itself, and act for some end other than the worthiness 
of reason, would be to degrade and debase its own being, and 
thus to make reason no longer reasonable. This gives an ulti- 
mate right quite other than the useful and the prudent. By 
generalizing what is, we learn what is useful and thus what is 
prudent for ourselves, and what is useful and thus what is kind 
or benevolent for others ; but we cannot thus determine that 
which is, and from the generalization of which we get the pru- 
dent and the benevolent, to be right, and cannot thus say that 
either prudence or benevolence is a virtue. If nature is not as 
it should be, then its working is to be resisted, and as far as 
possible counteracted, both for ourselves and others, no matter 
what injury nature thus working wrongly may do to us or others 
for it j i.e., no matter, as nature wrongly is, how imprudent or 



l68 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

unkind our resistance of it may be. But by the direct insight 
of reason into itself, and seeing what is due to its own ex- 
cellency, we find at once the law written on the heart, by 
which we can judge of all experience in nature, whether it be 
such as it should be, and thus whether prudence to ourselves or 
benevolence to others, in following out the generalizations of 
nature, are virtues or not. The ultimate rule is determined, not 
by the inquiry. What may the endless ongoings of nature do for 
me ? but. What does the worthiness of rational being demand 
of me ? 

Such rational insight awakens its peculiar feelings, in which no 
animal perceptions nor judgments according to sense can possi- 
bly enable us to sympathize. We may have all the feelings 
which prudence or kindness involves, through the excitement of 
our sentient susceptibihty, — for the rules of prudence and kind- 
ness may be determined by just such intellectual operations as 
the animal can perform, — but we can never have the feelings 
which the ultimate right occasions, except as in our rational 
being we have the insight to find the absolute rights of reason 
itself, and therein see what its own excellency demands. All 
the former are solely economic emotions, and are of the animal 
nature ; the latter only are ethic emotions, and are of the 
rational susceptibility. 

And still further, while the reason in man is cognizant of itself 
and of its own true dignity, and thus knows what is due to itself 
in its own action and its intercourse with other rational spirits, 
it also knows that it is set over the sentiency and the psyche as 
the supereminent faculty of the man to be their authoritative 
regulator and ruler. They are one in it, and it holds them in 
allegiance to its sway on its own authority, and as the rightful 
prerogative of its sovereignty. And it knows that it must hold 
all perpetually in strict subjection at the responsibility of its own 
integrity. It subjects itself to its own reproach if it permit any 
faculty or any feeling in the man to put itself beyond the con- 
trol of reason. 



THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. 169 

This full cognition of its supremacy necessarily awakens 
beneath it a susceptibility to feeling otherwise unattainable and 
always paramount. Every other susceptibility is to keep its 
feeling within the constraint of this, which takes feeling under 
the direct knowing of reason itself Just as the primitive con- 
sciousness was found to be a knowing together of object and 
subject, and that cognition came in at their discrimination, so 
here, this susceptibility we know now as Conscience is a know- 
ing together of reason's claim and reason's right, and the distinc- 
tion of these is at once the cognition of the man's obligation to 
the right rule. Duty is at the same time a due to and a due 
fro7n, and in the man endowed with reason each is the comple- 
ment to the other, and neither has meaning without the other. 
The Ethical feeling is love, in the sense of allegiance, to the 
Good, or to the Right, and this bond is upon all rational 
Humanity. 

Section IV. : Theistic Emotions. The animal eye can per- 
ceive the phenomena of nature, but as there is no insight of 
reason, it cannot comprehend a God in nature. Inasmuch as 
to animal being there can be no theistic perceptions, so to it 
there can be no theistic emotions. But in the things that are 
made, the rational mind of man sees the eternal power and 
Godhead of the Maker. Nature is comprehended in a personal 
Deity, who originates it from himself, and consummates it 
according to his eternal plan. Such recognition of a God at 
once occasions its own peculiar emotions. Feelings are awak- 
ened that could arise from no other object in the insight. Man 
from his conscious weakness and helplessness is obliged to feel 
his need of such a full source of supply, and his utter depen- 
dence upon it. In God alone he lives and moves and has his 
being, and is utterly empty without this unbounded fulness. 

Without including here other feelings than such as are neces- 
sarily awakened by the apprehension of a present God, it is 
manifest that such a rational insight must lay its foundation in 



I/O EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

the mind for its peculiar rational susceptibility. Not "only can 
no perceptions of sense enkindle these emotions, but they differ 
also from such as are awakened by the apprehension of beauty, 
or truth, or ethical right. They make the man, in his very con- 
stitution, a I'eligious being. He must feel awe and reverence, 
and entire dependence, in the presence of Jehovah. The very 
source of all beauty and truth and right is here, and thus the 
Absolute Good is known, and in this is an occasion for faith and 
love and worship, when the willing spirit shall joyfully yield 
itself in full devotion. Such apprehension of the Deity as fur- 
nished by our rational capacity alone, necessitates, in wicked as 
in holy men, the peculiarly constitutional emotions we here term 
theistic. Without the insight of reason, as revealing God in 
nature, this susceptibility could not be, and with such an insight 
and revealing this distinctive susceptibility must be. Man can 
no more divest himself of his religious nature and responsibility 
than he can of his ethical being arid obligation. The compre- 
hensive feeling in Theistic Emotions is the love of the Holy, or 
the Absolute Good, and it opens to human reason its purest 
communi'on. 

Now, in all the above sources of Rational Emotion, Esthetic, 
Scientific, Ethic, and Theistic, we have a wide sphere of sus- 
ceptibility altogether removed from, and elevated above, the 
sentient and the psychical. And it is necessary to observe, in 
conclusion, only this, that the urgency to action in all the rational 
susceptibility is wholly and consciously different from that in 
either the sentient or the psychical susceptibihty. The animal 
nature craves, and makes the man uneasy and unhappy in his 
want, and forces his activity for a supply. He must work to 
relieve his want ; he must get happiness only through toil. But 
the rational nature knows no uneasy cravings, and demands no 
toilsome work. It seeks not to devour its object, but simply to 
contemplate it ; not to use it to the end of filling " an aching 
void," but to keep it as having perpetually a serene complacency 



THE SUSCEPTIBILITY. I/I 

in it. The action that goes out towards it is ever cheerful and 
glad, and is thus known as the play-impulse. The soul goes out 
after beauty and truth as a delight, and seeks virtue and the 
worship of God as a blessed activity. The Beautiful and the 
True, the Right and the Good, are taken themselves as ends, 
and contemplated in their own dignity, and give full complacency 
in their own excellency, and are not to be degraded as means of 
gratifying any appetite, nor held as mere utilities for satisfying 
wants. Our activity is spontaneous and joyous as it terminates 
in either of them, and is never to become the forced and irksome 
toil of trying to make them subservient to us. The artist does 
not wish another to bring out ideal forms of beauty for him, nor 
the philosopher wish another to make up his science to his hand, 
nor does the moral man choose that another shall practise virtue 
for him, nor the religious man choose that another shall worship 
for him, and then give back the profit in some rewarding gratifi- 
cation. If our own complacency and satisfaction be not already 
in our virtue and piety, there can be no reward for us anywhere. 
Sense may get gratification by any barter, and buy in happiness 
at any market, but the reason has its end in the contemplation 
of whatever is made to correspond to the perfect paradigms of 
reason. We may have the love of the Beautiful, the True, the 
Right, and the Holy ; but the love in each must be solely for the 
object's sake, and is not to be sold in exchange for the gratifica- 
tion of some clamorous appetite. 

We here finish our outHne of the susceptibility in general 
which takes its feeling under the cognition of the general human 
intellect, with the retained notice that the subordinate suscepti- 
bilities and their respective feelings are ever correspondent to 
the subordinate faculties and their respective cognitions, and 
that the feeling prompts and guides the urgency and the energy 
which are executive of the ends of the knowing. If then we call 
the cognizing and feehng of the sentient susceptibility, the sense ; 
and those of the psychical susceptibility, the sotcl ; and those of 



1/2 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

the rational susceptibility, the spirit ; we shall have the distinc- 
tive executive agencies with their distinctive names characterizing 
their modes of working out their specific results. We may then 
use sense, soul, and spirit, as the executive agents which we are 
now farther to contemplate as we pass over into the next and 
now the last Division of our Empirical trying over of the facts 
of human experience. 



THIRD DIVISION. 



THE WILL. 

BY a diligenl! but unscientific study of man, in Anthropology, 
we attained the common experience of Humanity ; and in 
testing this common experience by new trials, we found a spon- 
taneous Mind capable of discriminating itself from its objects. 
The first objects known were those by perception and observa- 
tion through the organic senses, the mind here being an agent 
termed it/ie Sense. The second mode of knowing was by putting 
the mind itself under the past objects of sense and reflectively 
re-collecting them in logical order and deducing particular and 
general judgments from them, the mind here having been termed 
the psyche, or sentient Soul. The third mode of knowing was 
by an induction of what the insight of reason saw was necessa- 
rily precedent to experience in order that the experience should 
have been at all ; and this higher faculty of reason with which 
man was found to be endowed, was termed Spirit. By a further 
testing of experience, we have since found, under this capability 
of Intelligence, also a susceptibility for feeling which distributes 
itself in exact accordance with these intellectual agencies, the 
modes of feeling corresponding with the modes of knowing, 
precisely as they stand together in the sense, in the soul, and in 
the spirit. And now we have come to a third division of our 
testing of common experience over again, and must examine 
the executive satisfaction of the feehng and the knowing in the 
realized possession of the cognized and coveted objects. Much 

173 



1/4 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

then must our surprise, our interest, and our confiding convic- 
tion of the vahdity of our empirical science be heightened, if we 
find the executive will also to go precisely with the cognition 
and the feeling, and to show its energies with comparative free- 
dom and efficiency, as it works in the sense, in the soul, and 
in the spirit. 

Will may be comprehensively defined as the enei-gy exerted 
to execute the feeling of any susceptibility. A carefully tested 
experiment of the distinctive modes of exerting such executive 
energy in the three agencies of the sense, the soul, and the 
spirit, will give a clear and full apprehension of the whole prov- 
ince of the will in all its varieties. This will be done in the first 
chapter of this third Division of our Empirical Psychology, and 
the further elucidation, confirmation, and classification will be 
adequately noted in several successive chapters. The problems 
concerning the human will are of the deepest import. 



CHAPTER I. 



DISTINCTIVE MODIFICATIONS OF EXECUTIVE ENERGY IN 

WILL. 

These modifications will be found in the distinctive agencies 
of the sense, the soul, and the spirit ; and that of the last, or 
the spirit, will have its three distinctive subdivisions. 

Section I. : The Executive Energy in the Sense, ^^'e 
have in the sentient susceptibility found its feeling to correspond 
with its cognition. When instinctive hunger or thirst has been 
gratified, and the object gratifying and susceptibility gratified 
has each become known, there follows afterward, when the 
object is again present, or the instinctive want again arises, a 
distinctive feeling known as appetite ; and then, when appetite 



THE WILL. 175 

is awakened, we find there is also an impetus toward the object 
in the end and interest of its possession for a new gratification, 
the urgency to get being in proportion to the anticipated grati- 
fication. All excited sense-susceptibiUty may be termed appe- 
titive, and may thus be apprehended in common as all having 
the same mode of executive energizing. All the promptings of 
the organic senses, and the excitement of the natural affections 
and sympathies, even such as are called disinterested, like pity 
or kindness, are as impulsively direct and intent to their objec- 
tive end as is awakened hunger or thirst, and may as passionately 
impel to exertion proportioned to the excited energy. When 
there is but the appetitive feeling the energy goes out in execu- 
tion with no alternative, and the intensity of the appetite is the 
measure of the urgency toward gratification. 

The sense knows and feels only in the present, and has no 
retent of the past in orderly connection of place and period, 
and can make no reflective deductions and conclusions as 
logical rule for future emergencies, though the animal has faint 
and vague impressions of recent past experiences which, in 
some of the higher orders of animals, check and modify the 
receiving appetite, restraining its gratification, or even wholly 
suppressing the feeling. What has been observed is also some- 
times surprisingly used to elude pursuit, or cunningly decoy a 
victim and craftily deceive an enemy, but at the best, the sense 
can only teach for the occasion, and can only change its action 
according to the occasion. There is often a judging according 
to sense in the presence of the object, but no capability to 
deduce logical rules in abstract reflection for permanent practi- 
cal operation. As the feeling at the time is, such will be the 
urgency, and the given conditions will answer the consequent 
gratifications. There is no opportunity for self-determination 
or alternative election, but the change of action or habit must 
be only by interposing another appetite, or overcoming the 
present desire by some opposing aversion or stifling fear. 



1/6 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

Appetitive execution in gratification is brute-will only {hrutum 
arbit7'iu7ii) , and can never give to humanity proper moral 
responsibility. 

Section II. : Executive Energy in the Soul. The same 
mind, as psychical understanding, which in reflex action has 
logically conceived and judged all sense-phenomena, can now 
take these last attained appetitive gratifications, and logically 
judge them as it has done the other phenomena according to 
the uniformity of experience, and by applying the test of new 
experiments may scientifically ascertain their reality, and also 
estimate their comparative and collective valuations. And such 
scientific estimate will give occasion for a new mode of execu- 
tive energy, which will be a distinct form of will from that last 
attained in the executive energy of the sense. 

Re-collecting his past gratifications, and enjoyment of sensi- 
ble objects and occurring events, one can determine by honest 
estimate the less or greater pleasure received in these experi- 
ences himself, and tested by common experience can also 
determine what may in future be anticipated as attainable enjoy- 
ment in their repetition by himself or others, and can thus find 
a general standard of values in happiness for the varied forms 
of sense-indulgences. According to the ends in view in making 
these estimates, he can have his rules of policy, utihty, pru- 
dence, convenience, economy, etc., and thus by very safely esti- 
mated general deductions and conclusions, he can come to the 
regulation of common experience as individual, family, social, 
state, and general philanthropic interests require. And having 
thus carefully attained the general rule, the man as individual, 
or as a member of any community, may adopt such rule as his 
own maxim for life, or in association with others act with them 
in common, both in personally obeying and publicly upholding 
the regulations it imposes. In any and every case there is the 
careful attainment of the rule, and then the sincere adoption of 
it, and in both there is literally the making up the mind to it 



THE WILL. 177 

deliberately and decisively. It is an executive energy both in 
thinking out the rule, and in putting the ascertained rule over 
the life and conduct, and so in each it has been a form of will, 
and in some respects, at least apparently, quite a different mode 
of will from the mere executive of appetite in the sense. In 
the attainment of the rule there was the freeing of the mind 
from all bias, and in the adoption of the rule there was the 
exclusion of all hinderance, and to sucli extent there has been 
free will. The rule has been honestly gotten, and sincerely 
taken, though thus far it has been in the mind rather than that 
any soul has been it. It has been more dry intellect than 
ardent feeling, but let it be the patriarchal soul in the family, 
or the patriotic soul devoting his Hfe to his country, and we have 
at once all the emotion sufficient to manifest that the will carries 
a soul and not merely a mind in it. The man with such a will 
has become truly a living soul. 

And yet, living soul as it is, it lives only in and for the sense. 
It seeks appetitive gratification as eagerly as does the brute-will, 
differing only in this, that while the brute-appetite deals only 
with the retailer, this buys in by the wholesale. It takes in all 
past experience, and makes its estimate of it as a totality, and 
taking it in the long run gets all it can of sensual enjoyment. 
The greatest happiness on the whole is to be gained, and at the 
least expense, and so it is more thoughtful, more judicious, and 
a safer calculator than the hasty voluptuary who catches at every 
pleasure that is offered. But, when the time for the wholesale 
purchase has come, the calculating soul is as much the bond- 
slave of appetite as the passionate sensualist, and can no more 
resist the best bargain than the voluptuary can deny his hourly 
temptations. The higher happiness has no alternative in any 
lower offer, and the quickest bid is then the most prudent. . 

Nor has the soul as emotional any worthy prerogative over 
the mind as dryly intellectual ; for the emotional life of the soul 
is only the gladness of sensual enjoyment, and the most pater- 



1/8 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

nal or patriotic devotee to family or country, in the interest of 
sense-indulgence only, is capable of neither self-respect nor of 
public honor. Whoever lives only in pleasure is dead while 
living. No sentiments are cherished by such a one but those 
which find their spring in appetitive interest, and all calculation 
and estimation of good are on the side of sense-indulgence and 
highest happiness. There cannot be any appeal to honor and 
dignity, and thus there can be no executive energy but to the 
end of highest gratification. There is the calculating mind, and 
the test of scientific experiment, and so the executive energy 
is above the mere animal appetite for present indulgence, and 
is human {Jiumanum ai'bitriiini) , but as it is of "the earth, 
earthy," and " minds earthly things " only, this human will serv- 
ing the sense alone is yet an enslaved will {servile arbitrmui) , 
since it loves and never leaves its bondage to the flesh. 

Section III. : Executive Energy in the Spirit. As we 
have used the word soul for the understanding in this chapter, 
so we now use the word spirit for reason, inasmuch as spirit will 
include the reason, both as intelligent and susceptible, just as 
the soul included the understanding, both as intelligent and 
emotional. The word mind may be used in connection with 
the sense, the soul, and the spirit, rather by accommodation to 
each respectively in its own province, than that it can be made 
comprehensive of them. Some care in noting this precise 
application of terms will prevent all ambiguity while it will per- 
mit us to use less amphfication. 

Spirit, in human experience, is ever a superinduction upon 
sense and soul, and, necessarily in unity with them, it thus mod- 
ifies their action even when its presence is yet unacknowledged. 
And so also, in human experience, the superinduced spirit acts 
through the sense and the soul, and not in its own pure sim- 
plicity. The sense observes and feels, the soul ^<?ductively 
thinks and feels, but the spiritual insight of all this sees that a 
causal being must have preceded it, and /V/duces this primitive 



THE WILL. 179 

being as that without which neither the sense could have 
observed and felt, nor tlie soul could have so thought and felt. 
This primitive being, the spirit knows as the adequate cause, or 
the sufficient reason for both tlie sense and the soul experience. 
But the human spirit does not get this adequate cause and suffi- 
cient reason except by its insight into the actual experience. 
It does not say : I independently see the primitive, and from it 
deduce the sense and the soul experience ; but just the oppo- 
site : I look into and over the experience, and then I know what 
was before the experience. It is /;z-duction, /;z-ference of what 
truly was while as yet the experience had not been, and yet the 
human spirit did not know what previously was till the experi- 
ence came, and the spirit had its insight of it. While the soul 
only ^<f-duces from the invariable order of experience, the spirit 
/;z-duces that which previously was and which has made this 
order of experience invariable. Not that the human spirit is 
independently prophetic, but that it is authoritatively and invin- 
cibly zVz-ductive. 

And now this is the very truth we wish here to exhibit and 
establish in the will of the spirit. It has its three distinctive 
modes of executive energy, each of which inductively takes 
along with it its own authority in its own way of induction, and 
with so xlearly inherent a title to its assumed prerogative that 
all questioning becomes intolerable in its own absurdity. Expe- 
rience itself has no validity except in its origin from a sufficient 
reason ; and to make its naked facts, even in all their assumed 
uniformity and invariability of orderly succession, a basis for 
^(fductions that are to disprove reasonable /;zductions, is at once 
self-destructive. 

I. The yEsthetic Will. — While the artist is intently working 
at the matter he is moulding, his absorbing design is to put 
upon it the form which in full measure and proportion he has 
brought to it ; but this form is not that mere surface shape that 
will be given to his matter, for he will strive to so fashion it that 



l8o EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

it shall express itself as the product of a living energy bursting 
out and pushing up from within the matter itself. Whence has 
been attained that living form ? The answer may be, that he 
found it in nature, and took it from some one of the many 
living organisms that have come within his experience. But 
this one form has been multiplied beyond number in the many 
individual organisms of its kind in the present age, and thence 
backward through all the successive generations from the begin- 
ning, and we again ask with greater earnestness : Whence have 
come all these like forms of all past generations ? Few among 
them all can be found in which the practised eye will not detect 
some distinction and some imperfection, and yet the form will 
appear more or less clearly in them all. The rational spirit 
knows that these specific individuals could not all have come up 
from nothing, and gone out again in nothing, and just as well 
knows that simples which have no forms have not been collating 
and recollating themselves into these specific forms by hap- 
hazard integrations and disintegrations. The like form could 
not have perpetually come out at the end if there had been no 
precedent form. The perfect paradigm of them all must have 
been at their beginning. 

This form in the statue, which may be turned round and 
found full and exact on all sides, the painter may take in some 
one point and put upon his canvas, and add to mere light and 
shade all the expression of living color, and any observer may 
go out and around some specific organism in nature, and find 
the one specific statue-form with its canvas-color on all sides in 
every individual of the species he shall choose to examine. 
Whence all these living statues colored on all sides, but from 
some original form more perfect than all of them ? 

But mere living form, fresh colored and full on all sides, is by 
no means all or the most important lesson that aesthetic art 
teaches. High art has no satisfaction but in the expression of 
human or superhuman sentiment. The artist may be within his 



THE WILL. liSl 

province in giving completely mere living form, and especially 
in representing the striking sense-feeling of animal forms, but 
high art demands the exhibition of thought and feeling in senti- 
ments of which none but rational spirits can partake, and these 
expressed sentiments must be in their exactly appropriate forms. 
Whence, then, these forms for high art? Surely only as the 
rational spirit has already been, that it may communicate the 
sentiments, and that other spirits may read them in the forms 
given to them. To both sentiment and form the spirit itself 
must be the original. High art cannot grow up from sense 
and soul to spirit. Only spirit can participate in it, and even 
spirit only can catch and communicate the meaning of low art, 
which yet must have only pure form for its original. Moreover, 
the same sentiment can be given in picture form or in modu- 
lated tones that make the formal tune, and the picture itself 
can be so toned up or down that it seems to speak to the sym- 
pathizing ear as if uttering the sentiment discriminatingly in 
major or in minor key. Such complication of form and senti- 
ment in harmony can be recognized neither by sensual appetite 
nor by calculating interest in happiness, and can find neither 
explanation nor appreciation by any other faculty or suscepti- 
bility than those with which man is endowed in his rational 
spirit. The pure beauty is beyond sense and soul gratification, 
and is only for spiritual possession, but for the rational spirit it 
is priceless, and can be sold for no amount or duration of 
happiness but in conscious debasement. The spirit is thus 
competent and authorized to reign supreme over the entire prov- 
ince of aesthetic art, and both can and should exclude all appe- 
titive competition with pure taste and the love of beauty for its 
own sake. When the spirit thus reigns nothing brutal nor 
servile can force itself upon the soul, and thus, in its own 
domain of art, the executive energy is freed from sense-domi- 
nation, and its standard and rule of taste is changeless, and a 
thing of beauty is to it a joy forever. 



1 82 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

2. The Philosophic Will. — The sense and the sentient soul 
work only within experience, and all cognition and feeling 
and executive willing are entirely circumscribed by what has 
been beforehand observed and subsequently re-collected and 
put in logical conceptions and generalized judgments. The 
furthest and highest reach of empirical science in the field of 
sense-experience is the deduction of what will be from the 
invariable order of what now is and has been, and its only possi- 
ble conception of the connections of cause and effect is the 
fact of this invariable uniformity of antecedent and consequent, 
exclusive of all consideration of the manner of their connection. 
To science, cause is no conception of efficiency, but only inva- 
riable sequence as fact. On the other hand, rational spirit 
sees through and over the fact, the causal efficiency that binds 
the sequences and makes the fact. It knows the causal forces 
were already in being before the sense-observing, and that their 
exact correspondence with the observing activity, alone^ made 
them perceptible in the common experience. In this position 
above experience the rational spirit cognizes and expounds 
experience itself by its own zV^ductions of the antecedent facts, 
and not by any ^<?ductions from the order of the empirical facts. 
The modes of knowing in the sense and in the sentient soul can 
neither help nor hinder the spirit in its mode of inductive intel- 
ligence, and by no possibility can they comprehend or contra- 
dict or disprove the spirit's cognitions. Its capabiHties and 
susceptibilities are utterly beyond and outside of those in the 
sense and the soul, and the spirit's executive agency is thus 
independently free from either their antagonism or co-operation. 
It loves and minds its own work in its own sphere, and will not 
be moved from its serenity and integrity by any ambiguities, or 
delusions, or seeming absurdities or contradictions that come 
only from the reflexive and refractive media in the lower region. 
The philosophic spirit knows fully the lower world of phenom- 
enal being and its order of scientific testing, and sees that its 



THE WILL. 183 

most careful and profound experiments and deductions begin 
and end in nescience, except as they gain ultimate confirma- 
tion and validity from its more authoritative inductive scrutiny. 

Just, thus, as Art has its pre-existent and primitive Beauty, 
which gives and fixes its own sure standard and rules of Taste, 
so philosophy has its own Truth in the primal forces and causal 
efficiencies of Nature, which settle its order of process and 
establish its uniformities of collocation and succession, and only 
in the attainment and acknowledgment of these can there be 
any logic that is sound or any science that is satisfactory. A 
spiritual philosophy has thus its own open way to its own truth, 
and it must be to its own reproach if its executive will stops 
short of an adequate cause and sufficient reason for all human 
experience. 

3. The Ethical Will — The sentient soul, under the light 
and guidance of the rational spirit, we have now seen to have 
become competent to restrain itself in appetitive gratifications, 
by the love of the beautiful, so far as to keep itself innocent 
from indulgence beyond the rule of good taste ; and then fur- 
ther, by the love of philosophic wisdom to keep itself from the 
dominion of appetite, so far as to adopt no sentiment or theory 
not sustained by adequate causes and sufficient reasons. We 
now come to a more stringent rule, and a sterner imperative 
against sense-indulgence, in the law of immutable morality, in 
which the dignity and integrity of the spirit superadd their 
authority quite beyond the rules of taste and truth, and subject 
art and philosophy themselves to the higher claim of self-re- 
spect and personal honor in the man's spiritual endowment. 
Any forfeiture in these spiritual prerogatives brings in at once 
the shame of guilt, and the biting back of the soul upon itself in 
remorse. Placed in the alternative of sense-gratification and 
self-approbation, the soul has an occasion and position which 
enable it to summon energies sufficient to beat back and hold 
in subjection every passionate susceptibility within the rule of 



184 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

right as ultimate standard in all human action. In this alterna- 
tive to any and all sense-urgency, the soul may, and in this only, 
can keep itself pure from sense-defilement and self-debasement. 
There can come no sudden single appetite, and no general 
estimate of highest happiness over against which the soul 
may not at once set the higher imperative of loyalty to its 
endowment of spiritual excellence. Even artistic beauty and 
philosophic truth must be held within the higher claim of the 
spirit to its own integrity. There can never come anything for 
the sake of which I may consciously debase my spirit and not 
feel for it guilt and remorse. Here then is the stable position 
in which the soul may stand steadfast against any soliciting or 
coercing attack, and in which it may find the point of security 
for what eminently is will in liberty {libei'um arbitriuni) . The 
ultimate " power of choice " for man is in his capabihty to put 
his spirit's worth and dignity over against any temptation that 
may spring up in his experience. 

This will in hberty has its exemplification in two varied 
modes of execution. 

(i.) As persofial will. — The soul is .but the reflex of the 
sense, and can only deduce conclusions and make estimates 
from what the sense has already given. It may carefully test 
common experience by new experiments, but it cannot go back 
of experience to know whence that has come, nor by any testing 
of experience can it find whence the soul itself is, or what is 
its essence, or what the spring to its activity. It cannot thus 
get for itself, or give to itself, conscious personality. Only in 
the light of its endowed spirituality can the soul come to the 
recognition that it is a person. 

The spirit is an " over-soul " and throws its own illumination 
into the soul, thus giving to it the capability to cognize much 
beyond what it has re-collected from sense-observation. If we 
change this analogy of imparted illumination for that of com- 
munication by speech, we shall note that the authority of the 



THE WILL. 185 

spirit is literally personal, since it is as uttered mandates sound- 
ing thi^ough every chamber of the soul, summoning every resi- 
dent faculty to regulate its executive activity by the claims of 
the spirit's dignity, and positively forbidding anything to 'be 
done which does not stand in full correspondence with spiritual 
worthiness and integrity. 

The soul's conscience in the spirit will thus be precisely as its 
consciousness in the sense, a knowijig together of object and 
subject, and these two together become actual cognition in 
their defined separation. In this uttered voice of the spirit, the 
soul at once gets spiritual authority and its own obligation ; the 
spirit's right is the soul's right ; the former's claim is the latter's 
obligation ; and in this together knowing, the soul has a con- 
science, and becomes a person, executing its conscious suscep- 
tibility by a will in Liberty. 

(ii.) This personal will must also become a religious will. — 
In its full liberty, the soul yet knows that the endowment of 
rational spirit which it has, and by which it frees itself from the 
domination of sense, is but finite spirit ; and while completely 
sovereign in the individual, personality must still have its origin 
from, and be dependent upon, an Absolute Spirit which is also 
the Father of all spirits. To this God and Father of all, the 
individual soul feels that its finite spirit should be devoted, and 
that the majesty and glory of the Absolute should hold itself 
sovereign over all spiritual being. Each personal spirit must 
supremely reverence and adore the Infinite spirit, but this claim 
of the Absolute upon the finite can make itself felt by the soul in 
obligation only through the susceptibility in its own personality. 
It is the intrinsic im.perative in the absolute that binds the finite, 
but the finite spirit must first know this claim and its own obli- 
gation to it together, as its conscience, in order to its apprehen- 
sion of what is the demand of its own finite spirit upon itself, 
and that for its own worthiness' sake, and in the end of its own 
integrity it may fulfil the duty.' It will debase itself if the finite 



1 86 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

fail to reverence the absolute. Only as the claim of the abso- 
lute is lo}'any recognized by the soul, is any personal will 
properly a religious will. The religious will personally conse- 
crating the soul to God is a holy will ; the personal will 
subjecting every faculty of soul and sense to the dignity and 
integrity of the rational spirit is a righteous will ; and the rule 
of right must control in the exercise of the religious will, or it 
can never satisfactorily convince the conscience that it is a holy 
will. 

Just then as we have finished a scientific process of experi- 
ence in the Intellect and the Susceptibility by the attainment 
of the higher faculty of reason, so we now complete a scientific 
process of experience in the will by this attainment of the higher 
endowment in the man of a rational spirit. This gives the 
capability of a philosophical exposition, but this is not here our 
work. We only aim to attain an empirical science, and by the 
fair test of new experiments in the will we shall find that human 
experience is everywhere indicating its conviction that man is 
free and possesses a will in liberty, and this gives the facts of 
experience classification and systematic unity, since even when 
it is not acknowledged, he everywhere is rational spirit. We 
thus leave philosophy to a further future prosecution, and try 
experience in Will, as we have done in Intellect and Suscepti- 
bility, solely by scientific experiment. 



CHAPTER II. 

SCIENTIFIC PROOF OF WILL IN LIBERTY. 

Section I. : Max exercises such Capacity of Will. In 
the foregoing Chapter we have attained a completed concep- 
tion of a will in liberty, and now it is to be shown, in various 



THE WILL. 187 

testing experiments, that the human mind is endowed with 
such capacity, and that man actually so wills. It has already 
been made manifest that the human mind has susceptibihty 
like the animal not only, but also that man's rational endowment 
capacitates him for feelings quite above and other in kind than 
any animal can possess. Man is not left under the domination 
of appetite, with no alternative to the estimated highest happi- 
ness ; he has the interest of taste and philosophy, and may free 
himself from the bondage of the animal in the open spheres of 
beauty and of truth. 

But quite above all, he is competent to know himself, and 
thus to find the rule within himself that determines the ground 
of his duty to himself, his fellows, and his God. In this moral 
imperative, there is attained the spring to a possible election of 
righteousness against any and all other interests. Taste or phi- 
losophy may control happiness, and virtue or piety may control 
all. ' The spirit may keep all natural craving in subjection, and 
in the end of its own dignity it can originate acts subjecting all 
of happiness to its own moral worth. All the elements neces- 
sary to the capacity of a will in liberty belong originally to the 
human mind. The evidence that man puts in exercise such a 
capacity is found in the following direct inferences from facts in 
consciousness, and is a direct fact in consciousness itself. 

I . Consciousness of personal i-esponsibility can stand only in 
a capacity of will in liberty. — The conviction of personal 
responsibility for personal character and action is in every con- 
sciousness. Speculative theories and delusive conclusions may 
often beguile the logical judgment to . deny such personal 
accountability, but no speculations of the logical understanding 
can make the reason to belie its own insight. The spirit knows 
what is worthy of itself, and knows that it must take in its own 
being the dignity of its virtuous, or the infamy of its vicious, 
action ; and while speculation may err, the conscience must 
hold true to its own claims. No man, in the honesty of his 



1 88 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

rational apprehension, ever doubted the fact of his moral 
accountability. The tribunal and the judge, the witness and 
the executioner, are all consciously within himself, and if he 
speculatively deny his God, he cannot dethrone the authority 
of his own reason. He must acquit or condemn himself, and 
be consciously elevated or degraded in his own eyes. 

But the consciousness is as clearly explicit, that for unavoid- 
able results there can be no moral accountability. Power may 
crush in hopeless misery for actions that had no alternative, 
but no power can make the spirit see its own sin in that which 
it could not avoid, nor feel guilty desert for an act that could 
not have been otherwise. The reason goes quite back of all 
speculation on both sides, and not from any deductions in the 
understanding, but, from an insight into its own being, decides 
that it is responsible for personal deeds, and is not responsible 
for anything that is not voluntarily in its own personality. 
Power has nothing to do with such convictions ; omnipotence 
itself must go in accordance with them, and be judged com- 
formably to them. No arbitrary infliction, not even infallible 
testimcay from another, can wake the feeling of responsibility 
in the spirit, except as that spirit is conscious of character and 
deeds of its own, which might have been avoided by it. A 
thousand liabilities to suffering there may be, which to the 
sufferer are wholly inevitable, but no such sufferings ever awoke 
the spirit to recognize any moral responsibilities. 

These conscious facts make the conclusion valid for a capa- 
city of human election. Man knows himself responsible for his 
character and actions ; he knows himself not responsible for 
anything to him utterly inevitable. ; he has thus botli a char- 
acter and a life that lie wholly within the capacity of a will in 
liberty. 

2. The distinction between brnte and human will is in this 
r'ery point. — The animal is not rational spirit, and thus has no 
capacity for self-knowledge. To the brute there can be no 



THE WILL. 189 

insight of rights and claims due on its own account, and thus 
the brute can have no moral rule to direct a moral life. There 
is no element of the, ethical ; all is perpetually the natural only. 
Experience teaches it in many things its highest liappiness, and 
hence the animal learns the law of prudence ; yea, experience 
sometimes teaches the animal what is kind, and so far the brute 
is pathologically benevolent ; but in all this, the animal never 
awakes to see the right, and feel the claim of moral obligation. 
The executive act goes out under the impulse of the strongest 
prompting, and appetite can be controlled only by arousing a 
stronger passion. Nothing in the animal can originate from 
within itself, but all the animal i$ and does has been deter- 
mined for it in a previous condition. All is bound within the 
law of cause and effect in nature, and the brute can never lift 
itself above this bondage. There is no aspiration after freedom ; 
no dreaming of a spiritual world above the senses ; but an entire 
resting in the gratification of its own appetites. Satisfy want, 
and the brute is contented ; the whole capacity is thereby filled ; 
and the strugglings of a free spirit to reach some higher station 
are never known. Its whole end is happiness, and there is no 
quickening spring to rise to moral worthiness. 

But from all this man wholly differs. In his animal wants he 
is like the brute, prompted to highest gratification, and quiet 
when animal craving is satiated. But in his spiritual being there 
is that which no sensual gratification satisfies. Even as depraved, 
and the spirit basely subjected to the desires of the flesh, he 
knows that the claim is strong upon him to crush his appetites 
in subordination to his rational worth, and restrain all their 
gratification by what is due to his spirit, and thus stand out 
again in all the dignity and manliness of a good will that masters 
passion. He cannot make himself to lie down at rest with the 
brute when animal craving is satisfied. There are the impera- 
tives of conscience to fulfil ; the dignity and worth of moral 
character to sustain ; the approbation of his own and others' 



1 90 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

spirit to secure ; and though the means of fullest gratification 
were given, no gratification can content him. There is a con- 
scious wrong to himself, a foul debasement and degradation of 
his manliness,* if the behests of his spirit are not recognized and 
asserted against all the clamors of sense. He cowers in secret 
beneath the reproaches of his own conscience, and stands self- 
abashed and speechless before the rebukes of his own spirit, and 
well knows that he cannot hold up his head among his fellows, 
nor keep the blush of guilt from his face when alone, if he has 
sacrificed his loyalty to the right, and allowed gratified want to 
usurp the control of imperative duty. On the other hand, he 
knows that he can bear all suffering, and permit all that is animal 
within him to be crushed and die, and go to his spirit in its 
integrity for support ; all of which no brute can recognize, and 
in which nothing that is animal can participate. There is to 
man an alternative to his whole animal nature, and that he 
should live under the law of highest happiness, hke the brute, is 
clearly avoidable. He has a capacity of will in liberty. 

3. // is only in this capacity of will in liberty, that man can 
discri7ninately determine what is personally his. — All of man's 
constitutional being is conditioned in its own nature, and in the 
connections of surrounding nature ; and the supplied conditions 
bring the actions out with no alternative. They really belong 
to nature, not to the man, except only as the onward causes in 
nature have wrought them out within the field of his conscious- 
ness, and made them necessarily to be a part of his pathological 
experience. That I am hungry and desire food, or cold and 
weary and desire warmth and rest, are no acts in which my 
proper personality participates ; they are what nature is working 
in my constitution. Nature comes in and works upon me, and 
leaves its effects in my constitutional being, as the winds blow 
and the shadows pass over the landscape, and the sun shines 
and the showers fall upon it. These are not willed by me into 
act and being, and I never call them mine, as at all belonging 



THE WILL. 191 

to my proper personality. All such events are linked into the 
connected successions of nature without an alternative, and the 
chain that they compose is a unit, whether the linked events be 
of matter or of mind. The tones have been struck upon me : 
they have not come up from the depths within me, and thus 
sounded through all my being as personal to me. In my 
constitutional nature, nothing is mine ; all is put there by 
another. I am never to value myself upon it, nor to charge 
myself with it. 

But, of all the originations of my spiritual activity, I am quite 
conscious that they sustain a very different relation to me. 
They are caused by me, and not merely caused in me ; they 
are the product of an election, and not of an unavoidable coer- 
cion ; and I know them to be mine in a sense that will not 
allow that they should so be appropriated to any other person- 
ality, human or divine. That ideal beauty, that poem or song, 
that completed system of philosophy, each belongs to its 
author, as neither can be owned by any other. My disposi- 
tion, my plan, my habit, my purpose, these are wholly mine 
and not to be referred to nature, as is my hunger, my thirst, or 
any other appetite. And so, also, that assent to temptation, 
that enticing allurement, that dishonest transaction, that plan 
to defraud, that direct falsehood, of which I may be conscious 
in my own experience, these have been wrought by me, and 
come back directly upon me, and fix themselves inalienably 
within me, and forever belong to me, and not to nature, nor to 
my neighbor, nor to God. They were avoidable by me, and 
yet originated from me, and belong solely to me. I alone, in 
my own person, am responsible for them. And thus, too, that 
act of virtuous self-denial, that fixed decision for the right, 
that firm stand in duty, these are mine, and no other personal- 
ity in the universe, than myself the doer, can feel any self-com- 
placency in them. Influences from other quarters and agencies 
may have come upon me, which belong responsibly to their 



192 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. . 

authors; but these are products of my electing agency, and 
have originated in my capacity of will in liberty, and are thus 
my personal deeds exclusively. Only because of this capacity 
of will can I detach what is mine from all else, and see myself 
and my deeds to stand out together wholly discriminated from 
all other beings or facts in the universe. 

4. Reciprocal complacency in moral character stands wholly 
in this capacity of will in liberty. — Most animals are more or 
less gregarious, but their collection in flocks and herds is from 
constitutional propensities. The working of nature within them 
brings them together, and not that there is any reciprocal moral 
complacency between them. So, also, there are various associ- 
ations among men, which are induced by considerations of 
business, amusement, or social enjoyment ; and, indeed, a large 
proportion of human attachments that go under the name of 
friendship, and even take on the form of conjugal connections, 
are based on no higher considerations than kindred pursuits, 
common interests, or congenial temperament ; and in all such 
cases the bonds that hold the parties together find all their 
strength in constitutional nature alone. They are merely joint- 
stock partners in attaining happiness, held in connection only 
from the prudential consideration that they are useful to each 
other, and they never rise to the elevation of that social com- 
munion where the attachments are all induced and perpetuated 
by the reciprocal congenialities of moral character. 

But one good man loves another, and all good men love 
God, from the congeniality of spiritual dispositions, and their 
reciprocal complacency is solely through the righteous character 
that each recognizes in the other. It is like communing with 
like, in free personality ; and each heart beats in sympathy with 
the same ultimate moral rule, and glows with the same moral 
sentiments. Their spirits are all disposed to the same end, and 
thus the whole spiritual susceptibility, in each, is thoroughly 
congenial. They are kindred in spirit, and not merely held 
together as each can use the others for his highest happiness. 



THE WILL. 193 

God may be pleased with man in his constitutional being just 
as he is pleased with all the other works of his hand in nature, 
solely in the light of original adaptations, and as he sees man to 
be fitted to the uses designed ; and he may pronounce man on 
this account as he did nature at the beginning, to be "very 
good." And in the same way, man may be pleased with God ; 
and, viewing him merely as a means to be used for his own 
advantage, in that by him he gets propitious providences, fruit- 
ful seasons, a healthy body, and a happy heaven at last, man 
may say of God, in all the attributes which he cannot afford to 
lose, "very good"; his omnipotence, his wisdom, his fore- 
sight, his steady arrangement of nature, all "very good." 
What ends the man could not get, these attributes get for him, 
and he cannot do without them. They are all put to an excel- 
lent use in governing the universe for man's happiness, and are 
just as much a greater good than the sunshine and the shower, 
as they subserve a more important end in gratifying human 
wants, and securing greater happiness. But in all this there is 
no reciprocal complacency between God and man. Not thus 
does a good man love his God ; not thus does God love good 
men. There is a mutual delight, each in each, as objects of 
simple contemplation. An intrinsic excellency of moral char- 
acter is seen, and on each side loved for what it is, and not for 
what it can be bartered away for. The whole spirituality of 
each person is fully set on righteousness, and for no selfish con- 
siderations will the good will turn from its steadfastness ; and 
in this solely is their communion, and not because they see that 
they are each necessary to the other's happiness. Take away 
from man the capacity of spiritual origination, in the election 
of highest worthiness above all happiness, and he can commune 
with his fellows only on the same basis as the animals herd 
together ; and God can have complacency in him, only as he is 
pleased with the adaptations and uses of nature. Reciprocal 
complacency in character can stand in nothing else than the 
free originations of congenial moral dispositions. 



194 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

5 . Only in this capacity of will in liberty can the current of 
constitutional nature be I'esisted. — Constitutional nature works 
on, and I am hungry ; in this condition I am conscious that the 
craving for food is unavoidable. I am weary, and in this con- 
dition I cannot exclude nature's desire for rest. Let only this 
urgency of the appetite be given, and there is no alternative to 
the executive act in gratification. Let only conflicting appetites 
crave, and there is no alternative to the act which goes out after 
what is deemed the highest gratification. A smaller amount of 
happiness can be no occasion for carrying the executive action 
against a greater. A calculation of consequences, and in this 
an attainment of the rule of prudence, can only appeal to a sus- 
ceptibility for happiness ; and whether considered as an aggre- 
gate of all susceptibilities, or as one generic susceptibility, the 
only occasion given is that for the simple estimate of higher and 
lower degrees. All is completely conditioned in constitutional 
nature, and my prudence is as much a pathological law as my 
hunger or my weariness. The stream is one, and as it floats 
me onward in the direction of greatest happiness, I can 
work the rudder against no counteracting force in the current 
that carries me. Nature is thoroughly all in and around 
me, and I can seize upon nothing to steady myself against 
it, nor work my way upward in resistance to it. I myself 
am nature, and can only execute the promptings of my nature 
within me. 

But I am conscious, in my spiritual being, of the possession 
of supernatural agency. When appetite craves, in weaker or 
stronger measures, I can see in my spiritual being another law 
than highest happiness, ^nd feel the claim of spiritual worthi- 
ness ; and I can put this over upon the weaker appetite against 
the stronger, or over against all appetite that is in collision with 
it, and I have in this an alternative in kind to all that nature 
may present, and a spring to throw myself against nature, and 
work myself upward in resistance of it. The desires of the 



THE WILL. 195 

flesh may be aroused to their most passionate excitement, and 
all circumstances may favor the indulgence ; prudential consid- 
erations may seem to lie on the same side, and even the prompt- 
ings of kindness may also concur ; thus, the unbroken current 
of nature may tend towards gratification ; but if I also see that 
such indulgence would degrade and debase my spirit, I shall, in 
this claim of my rational being, have a full alternative to all of 
nature's promptings. Let constitutional nature do her best, or 
her worst, I may still stand in my spiritual integrity, regardless 
of either the happiness or the suffering that weighs itself against 
duty. There is, in this capacity of the spirit, that which is out 
of and above nature ; a measure and a test for nature ; a deter- 
miner when gratification may be, and when it may not be, with 
honor to the spirit ; and in the alternative of worthiness to hap- 
piness, thus opened, no alluring temptation from constitutional 
nature can ever come upon man, and be truly unavoidable. It 
is the right of the spirit to control and use the sense for its 
own highest excellency; and it is due to itself to put the 
flesh to any sacrifice and endurance which may preserve or 
exhalt its own true dignity ; and thus, in its own behoof, the 
spirit may contemn all enjoyment, and all suffering that 
nature can give. 

6. Individttal consciousness is clear for this capacity of will 
in libei'ty. — We do not say that any man is conscious of " the 
power of contrary choice," as it is called, in the sense that he 
can take a less degree of happiness when only a greater degree 
stands over against it. If only happiness appeals to a suscepti- 
bility, all consciousness is that the greater must be taken ; for 
there is literally no reason for anything else, and thus no alter- 
native. But in all men there is a deep consciousness that, 
somehow, there is an alternative to present disposition and 
character, and thus an avoidability in all voluntary action. 
They may not be able to analyze the fact, so that they can rep- 
resent it clearly in its conception to themselves, or to others \ 



196 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

but they all know that there is responsibility for their radical 
disposition of soul, and thus that its disposing is not without its 
alternative. It is not all the freedom a wicked man is con- 
scious of, that he may change his action if he please. That 
pleasing is in his spiritual and not in any constitutional disposi- 
tion ; and he knows the bond is on him that he please to 
change, and that his sin is in this very disposition which is not 
pleased to change ; and that, in this responsibility of disposition, 
the present evil one is avoidable. This fact may be made to 
stand out more perspicuous by a comparison with other activi- 
ties. 

The Intellectual Capacity is consciously without any alterna- 
tive in its activity. In all conditions of knowing, the knowledge 
must be as it is, in the given condition. When the occasion is 
given for perceiving a house, there is not the alternative for 
perceiving, not it, but a tree. To the intellect, in that condi- 
tion, the perception of the house, and just that specific house, 
is unavoidable. So in the concluding in a judgment ; with the 
conditioned facts, the specific judgment must be as it is. We 
cannot say we can change the knowledge if we please, for our 
pleasure has no control over it. All is determined in nature, 
and not at all in any spiritual disposition. So, also, is the 
constitutional Susceptibility without any alternative in its activ- 
ity. When nature makes me cold, I cannot change the feeling 
to warmth, nor can I repress the desire to be warm ; and when 
I hear that my brother is sick, I cannot change the feeling to 
that which is induced when I hear he is in good health. The 
feeling is determined in the condition, and all men are quite 
conscious that in order to change the feeling there must be 
a change of conditions. To the constitutional susceptibility all 
its activity is without an alternative, and every specific feeling is, 
in its given condition, wholly unavoidable. Not if we please 
can we here feel differently, for all these feelings are wholly in 
nature. 



THE WILL. 197 

But when I bring my capacity of will within the light of con- 
sciousness, I know that in precisely this point there is a wide 
distinction. I feel that my act of will was not bound, in its 
given conditions, without an alternative. I know that I could 
have done differently if I had pleased ; and I know, moreover, 
that if I was pleased to do wrong, that pleasing to so do was not 
inevitable. It was not determined in the conditions of nature, 
but wholly in my spiritual disposition ; and to that there was a 
full alternative. My spirit was bound, by the conscious claims 
of its own true dignity, to dispose its entire activity to a differ- 
ent end ; and I am fully conscious that the way was open to it, 
though it did not take it. We have only to mark the conscious 
contrast, in this point, between the acts of the intellect and the 
acts of the constitutional susceptibility, and those of the will, 
and we find a clear decision. The last is with an alternative, 
and consciously avoidable ; the two former, we know, are con- 
ditioned in nature. 

7. Uiiiversal consciousness. — There is a full opportunity to 
appeal to universal consciousness, on the question of capacity 
for election or of will in liberty. And this is affirmed, notwith- 
standing the fact that the speculations of the logical understand- 
ing must conclude against it. The operation of the under- 
standing must be wholly within nature, and can possibly have 
no recognition of a supernatural. It can only connect con- 
ceptions, and can never covipreliend the process, in an absolute 
beginning and end. Thus, to the logical understanding, there 
can be only the conditioned, and never an absolute. There 
may be one circle enclosing all that has yet been, but not one 
that is absolute for all that can be. There may be a mounting 
up from effect to cause indefinitely, but not to an absolute first ; 
for the understanding can only connect, and in its highest 
cause is still obliged to conceive of something higher that con- 
ditions it. The great first cause, to the logical understanding, 
has still its imposed conditions within itself, and can develop its 



198 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

activity in only one way. It is as much nature as any suc- 
ceeding cause, only that it is assumed to be a first one. But 
common consciousness has always testified to the conviction 
that there is an absolute first cause, though the understanding 
can never find it, nor even have a conception of it. 

Even so with liberty. The logical understanding can neither 
find it nor get a conception of it. Absolute origination is to 
this faculty an absurdity. The originator finds already within 
himself that which conditions his products, and he can choose 
only as he finds himself pleased to choose, but can make no 
alternative to this pleasing. He finds his disposition already 
within him, and does not himself originate it. The conception 
of his changing his disposition would involve a previous //<f^i-/;/^ 
to do so, and conditioned in this, a choosing to do so ; and 
thus, endlessly, the choice must be conditioned already in some 
preceding given disposition. So, we say, the logical under- 
standing must go. It is faculty for connecting, and not begin- 
ning ; for conditioned producing, and not absolutely originat- 
ing ; for knowing nature, and not at all the supernatural ; and 
if we have no higher faculty, we cannot possibly conceive of a 
God whose disposition is in any other sense his, than that he 
finds it already originated in him; and then, that this deter- 
mines all his acts of election, without alternative or avoidability. 
Nature itself thus runs upward through all the activity of the 
Deity, and both the finding and the conceiving, of an originat- 
ing will in liberty, is an impossibility and an absurdity. But the 
common consciousness never acquiesced in these conclusions of 
a logical understanding. Universally, the common mind has 
recognized a God, whose disposing of his whole spiritual activity 
was his own, and not that he found it already disposed, and 
must condition all his choices by it. Though men may not 
have discriminated between the faculty of the understanding, 
which must have its media for connecting, and that of the rea- 
son, which has its coinpass for comprehending ; yet have they 



THE WILL. 199 

always testified to the convictions of the latter, against the spec- 
ulative conclusions of the former. No thoroughly labored sys- 
tem of a will, conditioned in its antecedent grounds of prefer- 
ence, has ever satisfied the common conviction. That has 
always mounted to the source of all pleasing and preference, 
to the radical disposition itself, and affirmed that this was at 
the man's responsibihty, and that it had ever its alternative. 
All human language, all legislation, all the history of man, 
speaks out what mankind in all ages have consciously felt, 
an alternative and avoidability to their inmost disposition. 

The speculation of the understanding may at any time be 
counteracted and corrected in the insight of reason. While 
the understanding always finds a law imposed upon, the reason 
sees one inherent in, the agent. One holds to an end without 
an alternative, and is physical law ; the other binds by the im- 
perative of duty, admitting an alternative, and is ethical law. 
When the fact is clearly apprehended, that the spirit of man has 
the prerogative, which the animal nature has not, of knowing 
itself and its intrinsic excellency, and thus reading its duty in 
what is due in its own right, there is in this seen a full occasion 
for its own disposing of its activity, without waiting for highest 
gratified want to determine it. There is capacity for originating 
an act in the end of what is worthy of reason, and for electing 
between this end and any gratified want that may come in com- 
petition therewith. And even when a perverse disposing of 
itself has been effected, and a sinful and depraved disposition 
contracted, the conscious claim of what is due to the spirit in its 
own right has not ceased to press, and the alternative is open, 
however it may be certain as a fact that it will not be taken, for 
the spirit to break from its bondage and obey the imperative to 
secure its highest worthiness. 

Section II. : Discrimination of Will in Liberty. In the 
attainment of the complete conception of a will in liberty, we are 
prepared to make an accurate discrimination between its acts 



200 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

and all other mental phenomena, and such discrimination is 
necessary to a correct psychology. A self-active being, which 
has its law within ii:, and not imposed upon it, must go out in 
its activity as no other agency can; its acts are its own origina- 
tions, and not productions from it by an outer causality work- 
ing upon it. When put forth there was an alternative, and thus 
an avoidability, and these are characteristics of all acts of will 
exclusively. In most cases, the acts of the will are readily dis- 
tinguished from other mental facts. Intellectual acts are not 
liable to be confounded with voluntary acts ; knowing is so little 
similar to willing that cognitions never become mistaken . for 
volitions. But other mental activities are sometimes misappre- 
hended as from the will, and not unfrequently common speech 
confuses both volitions and other actions under the same word. 
We will notice some examples. 

I. Simple spontaneity is sometimes confounded with will. — 
Mind is inherently self-active, and in given occasions goes out 
towards its ends spontaneously. We have already attained a 
number of such facts of simple spontaneity, many of which we 
here observe are sometimes mistaken for volitions, especially if 
they occur on occasion of their being consciously wished for. 
This has been more particularly the case in the facts of atten- 
tion and observation. Cousin directly ascribes attention to the 
will, and makes it evidential of personality. But the thorough 
scrutiny of attention will at once determine its purely sponta- 
neous and not voluntary origin. When a discriminated sensa- 
tion is given, the operation of constructing or defining it so as 
to give its exact limits in either place, period, or degree, is of 
the intellect and not of the will. The will may be an occasion 
for it or not ; but in any way, the intellectual movement, which 
limits and thus gives form to that which is in the sensation, is 
purely spontaneous and not willed directly. It is often quite 
beyond the reach of the will, inasmuch as the will sometimes 
cannot prevent its being done, and at others cannot secure its 



THE WILL. . 20I 

being done. I may wish to construct an object, but cannot ; 
and I may wish not to have it definite, but there it is in full 
form before me. 

And precisely so of an act of observation. I may wish to get 
an object distinct in its qualities, or may wish not to have it 
distinct and cannot help it. Neither attention nor observation 
is of the will, but. from mere mental spontaneity. The differ- 
ence is in this : all acts of spiritual will in liberty must come 
within an alternative of approbation and opposing gratification, 
and constitute an election ; but pure spontaneity has no alter- 
native of imperative and appetitive, and is merely a simple 
ziltro-moiivity to its object. 

2. Will and desire are not tmfrequently confounded. — Desire 
is the mere craving of the sentient susceptibility directed to- 
wards its object of gratification, and is thus the occasion for an 
executive act to go forth in attainment. The executive act, we 
have already seen, is not from a proper will, much less then can 
the mere craving which urges to it be an act of will, and yet 
often is the mere desire taken as a volition. Indeed, in common 
speech, the word desire is sometimes put for will, and the word 
will is sometimes used for a mere desire. The two facts widely 
difi'er, and a correct psychology demands a clear discrimination, 
and no equivocal terms should be allowed to confound distinct 
things. 

In the following examples, we have the word will put for 
desire. "Not my will, but thine be done." Luke xxii. 42. 
This is the memorable prayer of Jesus to the Father, in the hour 
of his agony in the garden. Should we take the word will here 
for a proper election, we should have not only the impiety of a 
will in Christ opposed to the will of the Father, but also the 
absurdity of a will opposed to itself. The prayer expresses 
Christ's real will, and yet it is that his will may not be done. 
Manifestly, the will here is desire, the mere craving of the animal 
susceptibility. Christ, as human, had truly a sentient nature, 



202 . EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

which shrunk from suffering and desired to escape it ; but the 
will in the prayer is that the Father would disregard the desire of 
the flesh, and carry out in him his own chosen ends of human 
redemption. The same changed use of the term occurs in 
Lam. iii. 2>3' "For he doth not willingly afflict nor grieve 
the children of men." Speaking after the manner of men, it is 
not a congenial feeling, as desire, to afflict mankind ; but supe- 
rior considerations induce the purpose, as will, to do so. So 
also it is said of God, " Who will have all men to be saved, and 
to come unto the knowledge of the truth." i Tim. iu 4. 

Again, we have the word desire put for will in the following 
examples. ''They desired Pilate, that he (Christ) should be 
put to death." Acts xiii. 28. " And he (the Ethiopian eunuch) de- 
sired Philip that he would come up and sit with him." Acts viii. 31. 
**One of the Pharasees desired him (Christ), that he would eat 
with him." Luke vii. 36. " Then Daniel went in and desired of 
the king," etc. Dan. w. i6. In all those cases there is more than 
a feeling in the susceptibility, a craving for an end ; there is 
truly an election, as will. 

The appetitive craving is one thing, the electing its gratifica- 
tion is quite another ; and no matter how common speech may 
interchange words, philosophy must accurately discriminate facts. 

Section III. : Objections to a Will in Liberty. There 
are objections often urged against free-agency, and these should 
be fully and fairly answered. 

I. Obj. Like causes always produce like effects. — The force 
cl' this objection is that by an invariable law of causality its 
rction is uniform in like circumstances, and acting in the like 
conditions must ever produce the same effects. This law must 
liold in the mental world as well as the physical, and we are not 
thus to suppose that any mental acts can be different under the 
same conditions. 

If there is nothing above nature, this objection is sound, for 
past all contradiction, physical causes operate alike in the like 



THE WILL. 203 

conditions. But if nature is subject to the control of a super- 
natural, then must there somewhere be a causality that is not 
itself caused by a higher efficiency, and which truly originates 
events from itself. If this supernatural cause has an ultimate . 
rule of right in its own being, it is not only more than physical 
efficiency, but more also than pure spontaneity, since it condi- 
tions itself in its own ethical demands, and originates its effects 
intelligently and morally, and thus contingently and not neces- 
sarily. Such causality is not thing, but person, and as absolved 
from all causality above him, and all imperative except what is 
found within him, he is the absolute, spiritual Jehovah. 

Just so far as man's spirituality reaches, he too is person, and 
possesses the capacity of origination in liberty. His moral acts 
are not the .product of a natural causality necessitating them 
with no alternative,' but are his own originations, on occasion of 
both the impulse of appetite and the obligations of duty ; and 
which of these he takes is at his own responsibility, for the open 
way to the other made the taking of this avoidable. 

We need not thus deny a certainty of like results in like 
conditions, but the certainties of natural and spiritual causaHties 
are wholly different. Nature has no capability of origination 
from itself, and all its causes are themselves caused by an effi- 
ciency back of their own acting, and have thus no alternative ; 
but spiritual causality is out of, and above, all nature's causes, 
and may begin action in itself and thus truly originate, without 
requiring that its acts shall be caused and thus necessarily deter- 
mined by nature. However certain it may be, in reference to 
any action, what it shall be from its occasions, those occasions 
do not cause it to be, and thus do not exclude avoidability. 

2. Obj. Then all means are powei'less. — This objection 
urges that if the spirit can begin action in resistance to nature, 
then no matter what motives are presented, nor what means 
are used, the spirit can counteract them and the will go against 
them, and thus nullify all their efficiency. 



204 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

True, all means are powerless, since they are not efficient 
causes operating on the spirit, and themselves causing the acts 
which come from it ; else would the spirit be subjected to 
nature, and all its acts would be unavoidable, because grounded 
in necessity. But they are not powerless in this sense, that 
they give occasion for spiritual action, and throw a moral in- 
fluence upon the spirit in the direction to a given action. 
Whether of the appetite towards happiness, or of the imperative 
towards worthiness, they are inducements in one direction ; and 
hindrances in the other direction ; and may be a ground of 
certainty which direction will be taken ; but inasmuch as they 
are not physical causes, themselves causing the spirit to act, 
they constitute no necessary inability to an alternative, and at 
the highest are truly avoidable. They have no power to make 
the spirit to be nature, but they have influence which may give 
the certainty what a supernatural spirit will do. 

3. Obj. // denies that eve?'y event vinst have its caiise. — 
The objection affirms that here are acts of the spirit which 
are not connected in any efficiency with their antecedents, 
that these antecedents may be of any kind, and they do not 
make their consequents to be after their kind, and that the 
antecedents do not cause the consequents, and thus the con- 
sequents are without cause. 

To this we may clearly reply, that while the spiritual act is 
without cause in that it is not an effect from any of nature's 
causes, while no antecedent in nature is its immediate antece- 
dent, but it originates in a source wholly supernatural, while it 
is wholly a new thing put into nature which does not come out 
of nature, and is no change of what was in nature already, still 
the spiritual act is not without cause. It does not come up out 
of a void. Its proximate antecedent, and thus its immediate 
cause, is the spirit itself. Nothing out of the spirit, and espe- 
cially nothing back of the spirit in the realm of nature, has 
caused it ; the spirit itself has originated it, and henceforth that 



THE WILL. 205 

event, whatever it may be doing in nature, belongs to the spirit, 
and can nowhere find for itself another author. 

4. Obj. This cuts off all spiritual action fi'oin the possi- 
bility of foreknowledge. — The objection declares that the act is 
contingent and may be avoided ; it has no necessary connection 
to anything that now is in nature ; it may therefore be avoided, 
and nothing that now is can determine that it will not be 
avoided ; it is thus impossible to be foreknown. 

But while it is not now given in anything yet within nature, 
and cannot thus be foreknown by looking through any succes- 
sive changes in nature, this does not deny that the Absolute 
Spirit may have the certainty of it. Must God foreknow, only 
as he can look through the necessary sequences in nature ! 
The doctrine of will in hberty does not deny, but affirms, that 
any spirit, which might know all the inner and outer occasions 
in which the agent shall be, might find a ground of certainty in 
these very facts. These occasions will not cause the spiritual 
event, but may give a ground of certainty that what is in itself 
wholly avoidable yet will not be avoided. This is always the 
only ground of moral certainty, and yet with our limited means 
of knowing the occasions, we often trust the highest interests 
on our certain convictions of what free agents will do ; a per- 
fect knowledge of all the circumstances might give perfect cer- 
tainty which alternative would be taken. 

5. Obj. Such free origination is inconceivable. — The doc- 
trine of will in liberty, it is said, supposes a causality which 
can go out one way or another, and that there is nothing back 
of it causing it to go in either, and that thus it must go the way 
it does for no cause or reason whatever. This is the absurdity 
of choosing without choice, and is inconceivable. 

It is admitted, and affirmed, that it is inconceivable by the 
logical understanding. A liberty in physical causation is an 
absurdity. On one side, we cannot conceive that the causality 
can have an alternative, for that would involve that a conditioned 



206 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

cause might rise above its conditions, and would be the absurd- 
ity of action from nothing. On the other hand, a will, already 
determined in its cause and going out with no alternative, is 
the absurdity of unavoidable choice. Physical causality can 
have no alternative ; action in liberty can be only with an alter- 
native ; and thus an understanding, which can only connect by 
conditions, cannot conceive of a liberty in causation. A logical 
understanding can conceive of no beginning, and of course can 
conceive of no originator. But we are obliged by our reason 
to demand a first, and thus to attain a conception of an author 
who has no cause before him conditioning either his being or 
acting, but in whom action originates. This is the very con- 
ception of spiritual being, and entirely supernatural existence ; 
a being not bound in nature, but competent to originate un- 
caused by nature ; and till the reason gets this conception, 
entirely distinct from all the efficiencies in nature, it knows 
neither a God nor a soul, and must confine all things within the 
linked succession of a series to which it can give neither an 
origin nor a consummation. Liberty is a necessary attribute 
of spiritual being, and is fully conceived in an existence that 
can hold on to a law of duty within itself, against any end of 
action from without itself. It lifts the conception at once out 
of nature to that which can work against nature, and is both 
self-action and self-law. 

Such we must conceive to have been the creative act of God. 
It must have originated in himself, and gone out self-directed ; 
for any conception of previous conditioning that made the 
creative act to be, and to be such as it was, would demand a 
necessitated series of conditions running up in the bosom of the 
Creator without an original. The same conception of agency 
as an endowment by God, originating acts within the finite 
sphere of man's efficiency, is both possible and actual. 

6. Obj. All analogy is opposed to it. — All the causes in 
nature are conditioned in some higher causality, and go out 



THE WILL. 207 

into effect without an alternative, and thus from analogy we 
sliould conclude that it is so with mind, and that all its acts 
have their previous determining causes. 

To this it might readily be answered that analogy is of no 
force against a matter of fact. Where a fact cannot be brought 
within experience and thus to the test of consciousness, a fair 
argument from analogy is legitimate, but conscious experience 
cannot allow itself to be contradicted by any analogical argu- 
ment. But were analogy admissible, we should derive from it 
the strongest support in favor of action in liberty. No physical 
causality is held at all responsible. It lies confessedly outside 
of the entire sphere of ethical activity, and can be subjected to 
no imperative constraints ; it may therefore at all times be 
conditioned in its antecedents, and be doomed to work on 
without an alternative. But spiritual agency is responsible 
agency, and on this account is excluded from conditions of all 
physical causation and all analogical deductions therefrom, and 
demands just this agency of free origination and alternative 
election. 

7. Obj. All surprise for the most I'ash and unreasonable 
conduct is wholly without foundatio7i. — All spiritual action is 
contingent, and thus wholly avoidable, and may just as well be 
against reason as with it, and even against interest as for it ; 
thus there is no ground for expecting one act rather than an- 
other, and no occasion for being surprised at any man's action. 

But occasions for action are necessary to all free causation, 
and these occasions give inducements or hindrances to the act, 
and may supply a ground of certainty what the action will be, 
though they do not fix it in unavoidable necessity ; certainly 
then these moral occasions may furnish strong grounds for 
expecting the act, and reasonable surprise if not exerted, or if 
some quite different action be put forth. But this objection 
may much more forcibly be retorted upon the objector himself. 
With him all is made unavoidable in the previous conditions. 



208 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY, 

As the case is, there is no alternative ; one event alone can be. 
All surprise at the event must thus be wholly from ignorance. 
I should feel no more surprised at any human conduct than at 
the bursting of a steam-boiler. Neither could have been other- 
wise in the conditions, and the surprise is alike in both, viz.^ 
ignorance of the reason why they could not help it. But actu- 
ally, my surprise for the human conduct is why the man did 
not help it. 



CHAPTER III. 



CLASSIFIED GRADES OF WILL, AND THEIR RESULT IN 
FIXED CHARACTER. 

Mind or Soul may be indifferently applied as terms to denote 
the agency in willing ; the mind more specially refers to the 
knowing, and the soul to the feeling side of the activity. This 
agency in willing stands between the sense and spirit and must 
go out for gratified sense or approving spirit, and has free 
capability for taking one and rejecting the other, and thus acts 
morally and responsibly with this free alternative. 

The will, as capacity, is the power of election, and thus an 
avoidability in the origination of the act will characterize every 
proper volition ; yet in other respects the acts of the will may 
have permanent distinctions among themselves, and there are 
many advantages in having them classified according to their 
inherent peculiarities. One great benefit from it is a clearer 
apprehension of the point of responsibility, and of the fountain 
of moral character. 

Section I. : Immanent Preference. Preference is an actual 
putting of one thing before or above others ; and this may be 
done in the soul's own action without any overt manifestation 
of it, and as thus lying hid in the mind may be termed an 



THE WILL. 209 

immanent preference. An act of the judgment may decide 
which of two sources of happiness is the greater in degree, and 
of worthiness and happiness which is the higher good in kind, 
but such distinction of estimate in the judgment is not a prefer- 
ence. And so also one desire may go out towards its. object 
more intensely than another, or one imperative may awaken a 
deeper sentiment of obhgation than another ; but no difference 
in degrees of awakened susceptibility should be termed a pref- 
erence. There must be a proper election, a voluntary setting 
of one before others, or it is not a proper act of preference. 
Want of occasion or countervaiHng circumstances may preclude 
this preference from manifesting itself anywhere on the theatre 
of active life, and thus the act of preferring may never pass over 
from the mind ; yea, the intention through all the duration of 
the preference may be that it shall never come out in open 
action ; yet is there in it a real commitment of the spirit to the 
end preferred, and such inward election is a personal willing, 
which to the eye that searches the heart has its proper moral 
character. It is fully within the person's own consciousness, 
and the conscience accuses or excuses accordingly. 

As examples for illustration, there may be mentioned the 
declaration of the Saviour, " Whoso looketh on a woman to lust 
after her, hath committed adultery already with her in his 
heart." Matth. v. 28. "Whoso hateth his brother is a murderer." 
I John ill. 15. And quite prominently, the tenth commandment, 
"Thou shalt not covet," etc. Ex. xx. 17. In a good sense we 
find this immanent preference in the case of David, who would 
have built a temple for the Lord, but was prevented because as 
a warrior he had shed 'much human blood. "It was in thine 
heart to build an house to my name, thou didst well that it was 
in thine heart." i Kings viii. 18. As a general application on both 
sides, good and bad, we have Solomon's declaration of man, 
"As he thinketh in his heart, so is he." Prov. xxiii. 7. This 
thinking in heart is a real electing purpose. 



210 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

The immanent preference of objects and ends must widely 
affect the entire personal character, though the action towards 
the object externally be always restrained. The whole inner 
experience of the man is modified by it, and all his habits of 
meditation and silent reflection become tinged with the color of 
his secret preferences. It is easy to see what was the inward 
preference of David, when he said of the Lord, " Whom have I 
in heaven but thee, and there is none upon the earth that I 
desire beside thee." Ps. ixxiii. 25. And while this induced pious 
meditations on his bed in the night-watches, the effect upon his 
entire character would be in strong contrast to the impure and 
debasing thoughts springing from the immanent preferences of 
the sensualist. The inward influence must soon so far affect 
the whole man, that the outward life will be colored by it 
through all its communion and conversation, though the spe- 
cific preferences be still restrained to the heart. An immanent 
preference will surely, thus, soon become a main preference, 
and then an overt purpose controlling outer action in attain- 
ment of the end preferred. The will thus rises to the higher 
grade of an overt purpose. 

Section II. : Governing Purpose, ^ The mind's activity may 
dispose itself towards an end, that may demand many supple- 
mentary acts before it can be attained ; in such a case the 
general election of the end is a purpose, and inasmuch as it 
prompts the executive acts and guides them to its own issues, 
it is properly termed a goverjiing purpose. The executive acts 
are solely that the general purpose may be effected. Such 
governing purpose may be more or less comprehensive, pro- 
portioned to the number and complication of the means and 
agencies used to complete the end, and so far as it reaches, it 
governs the process, and is, to that extent, a governing purpose. 
A i^urpose to visit a distant place will govern all the actions 
necessary in preparation for and prosecution of the journey ; 
but such a purpose will not be so comprehensive nor engross- 
ing as that which fixes upon the main end in life. 



THE WILL. 2 I I 

The governing purpose has this pecuHarity, that it is con- 
tinuous and prolonged through all the process to the consum- 
mation. An act of election is at once, and may wholly cease 
in its instantaneous energizing ; and, in this point of view, voli- 
tions are transient and fleeting ; but when the election has been 
of an end that is to be attained only through a long succession 
of activities, the electing act does not die in its outgoing, but 
the spirit fixes itself upon its object and remains in a state of 
energizing towards it. That it- has taken its distant end re- 
moves all the uneasiness of hesitation and suspense, and there 
is no farther place for choice, since the mind is already made 
up ; but the action, as will, has not terminated in the choosing ; 
it flows on in a perpetuated current towards its object, and the 
spirit may be said to be in a permanent state of will for the 
accomplishment of that end. A purpose is thus a perpetuated 
will from an election. A person may not always retain the 
consciousness of having made the distinct and deliberate 
election ; nor, indeed, be conscious how deep and strong the 
current of his purpose has become. An absorption of all the 
mental energy may already be in a purpose to acquire and 
amass riches, and yet the distinct election of such an end may 
have no place in the memory ; and the purpose itself may have 
strengthened so insidiously, that the man has no conception 
what a very miser he has become ; but there needs only to be 
suddenly interposed some threatened danger to his wealth, or 
some obstacle to any further gains, and at once the perturbed 
spirit manifests the intensity of its avarice. His will has yielded 
to passion so readily, that it has not known the strength of its 
bondage. 

As the governing purpose is enlarged in the comprehensive- 
ness of its end, and the control it holds over all the mental 
energies, it comes to be known as a permanent disposition, and 
while a fixed and comprehensive purpose in business would not 
be termed the man's disposition, yet when found so engrossing 



212 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

as to merge all else in the end of getting and of hoarding 
money, we should not hesitate to say of such a purpose, that it 
is the man's disposition. It goes so far, and is so controlling, 
that it gives character to the man. This general character will 
be estimated from the end to be attained by the purpose and 
the earnestness of the pursuit, and so each distinctive purpose 
will have its specialty both in occupation and zealous prosecu- 
tion. The different trades, professions, and varied occupations 
will all have their characteristics, and the men will be prudent, 
diligent, ambitious, etc., according to their activity. The moral 
character can be ascertained only in the end of the governing 
purpose. 

The governing piLrpose is, in this way, distinguished from all 
the choices or volitions that are subordinate to it. They exist 
for it, and find their whole determination in it. They may 
change according to circumstances, and often the good and the 
bad man's end may induce to the same outward action. A 
worldly end may sometimes be best attained by putting on the 
semblance and performing the ceremonials of piety ; but the 
character of the subordinate act is to be estimated, not from 
the outward seeming, but solely from the governing purpose 
which it is designed to execute. The character can be changed 
by no change in the choices and volitions of the man, but only 
in a change of the governing purpose. Nor will this exclude 
all interference from other interested sources. The most stren- 
uous purposes will meet counter currents of conflicting emo- 
tions. 

Desultory volitions. — An election of some comprehensive 
end may have induced a permanent state of will in a governing 
purpose, and this may still continue un renounced and un- 
changed, and yet this governing purpose may not be so ener- 
getic as to preclude the sudden and strong awakening of some 
constitutional susceptibility, to carry out an executive act in 
gratification of it, against the direction of the governing pur- 



THE WILL. 213 

pose. Such turning aside from the main end, while the gov- 
erning purpose towards it is not renounced, is what may be 
termed a desultory volition. Observation and experience con- 
stantly give such facts, where a passionate impulse comes sud- 
denly and strongly in, and the action for a time is carried away 
from the main object before this counter-impulse of sudden 
feeling. But inasmuch as the governing purpose which it thus 
counterworks has not been discarded, the desultory impulse 
must af length subside, and the old unrenounced purpose again 
bear sway. The passion is satiated and subsides, reflection re- 
turns, and the main end again comes in clear view, and the 
governing purpose controls the subordinate acts again for its 
attainment. The man chides himself for his folly and weak- 
ness, and hastens on more determinately towards the predomi- 
nant object. 

A familiar illustration of the intrusion of a desultory volition 
will make the conception distinct. I learn that a dear friend is 
dangerously sick in a distant city and I take the purpose to 
visit him. This controls all my volitions in arranging for the 
journey, and from the start onward, for several days travel 
towards the place. Then an intensely interesting incident sud- 
denly occurs, and my feehngs are at once powerfully excited 
and my attention absorbed by a surprising curiosity or conviv- 
ial opportunity or chance for pecuniary speculation ; and I give 
way to this desultory impulse and lose sight of my main end for 
some hours. But at length this impulse becomes exhausted ; 
the main end and purpose of my journey comes'vividly up, and, 
conscious that they have never been renounced, though inex- 
cusably suspended, I hasten on to the prosecution of my inten- 
tion, reproaching myself for my weakness and fearing that all 
may now be in vain, and that during my delay my friend may 
have died. And so, once more, where the governing purpose 
rises to a permanent disposition, — an exceedingly avaricious 
man may be taken as an example, whose purpose fixed on gain 



214 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

may have made him a very miser in all his feelings and habits. 
There may suddenly come to him an appeal, from some inter- 
esting sufferer, that shall rouse his pity and induce the gift of 
some of his idolized gold in relief of this deep distress. But his 
governing purpose has not at all been changed in the intrusion 
of such a desultory volition, and very probably in a few hours 
all this' constitutional sympathy will have passed away, and he 
be chiding himself as a fool for his weakness, and more firmly 
resolving not again to be so overcome as thus to be cheated of 
the object of his ruling passion. 

The real character of the man is in his purpose, and if this is 
not changed, no desultory acts affect his true character. A 
good man may have sudden and strong temptations in appeals 
to constitutional appetite, and the impulse may bear him away 
in sinful action ; but if the good purpose has not been re- 
nounced, the tempting influence will at length fade and the man 
come back from his fall with bitter tears and self-reproaches, — 
a repenting backslider, but not a deliberate apostate. Against 
both a bad and a good governing purpose, such sudden im- 
pulses may induce desultory volitions which are quite in con- 
tradiction to the main direction of the governing purpose ; but 
we are not to estimate the man's proper character by them. If 
the bad man do a good deed only through the impulse of con- 
stitutional feeling, all we can say in his favor is, that his de- 
praved disposition was not too strong for some transient traits 
of humanity ; and when a good man so does a bad deed, he is 
a sinner in that act, and should feel debased and humbled by 
it and repent of it ; but the real character of neither the bad 
nor the good man was in this way at all changed. The strength 
of character is in the decision and firmness of the governing 
purpose, and to be perfect, this should be so strong in the right 
that all desultory impulses should be resisted; but no -man is 
safe in supposing, and no man can at any time be conscious, 
that his governing purpose is so strong that all desultory voli- 



THE WILL. 215 

tions against it shall forever be excluded. But no governing 
purpose of special application to its end will be sufficiently 
broad to determine ultimately the radical character of the per- 
son, nor can any governing purpose to a special end stand 
alone, but must be comprehended in and rest back upon a 
deeper basis. The entire voluntariness of the man has in some 
way its disposal to an ultimate end, and in that only is the 
man's radical moral character to be ascertained, and in such 
disposition is found the ultimate grade of the human will. 

Section III. : The Radical Disposition. The Mind or Soul 
is ever open to all the appetites of the sense, and if it were sen- 
tient only it could have no alternative to sensual indulgence 
when appetites crave. But man is originally endowed with 
rational spirit, and this is set over against the sense, with imper- 
atives which make the soul know, that thereby it ought and 
can hold all of appetite in subjection. The soul, from its 
earliest probation, stands between these two ends of action, 
viz., sense-gratification and spiritual approbation, and gives 
itself supremely to one or the other. It must take one, it can- 
not take both, and at every point of its experience the, soul 
either serves the sense and in this is ''carnally minded," or it 
serves the spirit and is '' spiritually minded," and to whichso- 
ever the mind is made up and whichever as psychical judg- 
ment it has adopted, that is the soul's radical disposition. 
The whole executive energy is characterized by it since the 
will has gone into it, and the soul has adopted it. The man's 
treasure is there, and " where the treasure is there will the 
heart be also." The radical disposition is thus the heart and 
soul of the person. 

The governing purposes have been in detail, while here in 
the radical disposition they are a totality, and are all alike in 
moral character with it. The sentiency only is animal ; the 
sense and soul together only is the scientific man who acknowl- 
edges no ethics ; the sense, soul, and spirit in one is the artis- 



2l6 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

tic, philosophic, ethic, personal, and religious man, who recog- 
nizes nature, humanity, God and immortality, and who puts all 
spiritual communion in this, that each personality in the com- 
munity has the radical disposition, which in its integrity is a 
hearty devotion to spiritual sovereignty. The one sentiment 
adopted by all is, an interest in the reign of righteousness 
everywhere and forever. How shall it be made clear that 
this is imperative upon all humanity? 

The true Heart of Humanity. — To make clear what this is, 
and fix its universal obligation, will require further consideration. 

The animal constitution is a sensory only, governing itself 
by remembered experience. The human constitution, as scien- 
tifically acknowledged, is sense and soul, the soul governing 
sense by deductions from uniformly tried experiments. Man's 
true constitution is sense, soul, and spirit, the soul adopting 
sense-indulgence or spirit-rule on its own responsibility. 

The constitution is given in each case,- and the executive 
activity gets the results. In the animal, the activity is sponta- 
neous ; in the scientifically human, the agency is the soul's cal- 
culation of greatest happiness on the whole ; and in the proper 
man, the agency is the soul's election between sense-gratifica- 
tion and spiritual integrity. The soul's estimate and adoption, 
in any case, begets a disposition, which is as important as the 
end it attains. The disposition imports a sentiment, which 
evolves both knowing and feeling, and the feeling part of the 
sentiment is the Heart of the disposition. The feeling which 
lies at the central point of the radical disposition is truly the 
man's heart, and this the rational spirit requires should be right- 
eous in all experience. 

We shall need to ascertain the process by which this central 
feehng in the disposition is induced, the distinctive grades it 
may present, and the point at which responsibility attaches to 
the soul in fixing this true heart within itself. 

I. The process by which the heart of any disposition is 



THE WILL. 217 

induced. — In constitutional feeling the appropriate occasion 
at once excites the feeling, and no process intervenes. But 
that the soul may have its sentiment, it must first dispose itself 
to some interest as end to be attained, inasmuch as experience 
invariable testifies that till the disposing act has passed, the feel- 
ing of gratulation will not come. To the end of making the 
necessary process quite manifest, we give some direct appro- 
priate examples. 

We may first take an illustration from a case where a dispo- 
sition is deliberately formed. A young man lAay have just 
concluded his college course by which he has become intellec- 
~tually fitted to enter upon any course of direct professional 
study. The question presses for a decision, "What distinct 
profession shall I pursue ?" He may, perhaps, readily dismiss 
all others, but is quite indeterminate in reference to the pro- 
fession of Law or of Divinity. He will study for the Bar or the 
Pulpit, but which he should take he cannot at once decide. 
He deliberates ; estimates his own qualifications and circum- 
stances ; calculates carefully all the consequences that maybe 
apprehended; and ultimately disposes the whole mind in a 
direction to one pursuit. We now- suppose it to have been, 
judiciously and conscientiously, the Gospel Ministry; and with 
the mind so made up, there is no need of a perpetual energiz- 
ing to keep it in that direction : it has already gone into a fixed 
state, and become a specific bent or permanent disposition. 
And here the point to be noticed is, that this disposition to the 
Ministry has induced feelings and emotions which could not 
have been in his experience had his mind been disposed on the 
profession of Law. Every day will come up feelings and sym- 
pathies that originate wholly in this disposition of his mind. 
His constitutional susceptibilities have not at all changed, for 
constitutional nature has not at all been modified ; but the mind 
Jias become disposed in a new direction and bent to a new and 
permanent end ; and at once, in this permanent disposition, 



2l8 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

mere is a new state of feeling wnich could in no other way have 
been induced. The same may be said of any other determined 
pursuit. The Physician, the Farmer, the Sailor, the Soldier, 
etc. : each has his peculiar class of sympathies and emotions, 
and one could not be exchanged for another but in the corre- 
sponding change of disposition. The constitution remaining 
wholly unchanged, these feelings become possible, in the secur- 
ing of the appropriate disposition for them. 

Still more prominent is the peculiarity of some feelings, where 
the disposition has not been so delibei-ately foiined. Wealth, or 
fame, or pleasure, may be proposed as ends to be attained ; but 
the strong bent of the mind, in its particular direction to either, 
may have been effected gradually, insidiously, and almost im- 
perceptibly to the man himself. The disposition may have had 
its beginning and growth so unnoticed, that it may emphati- 
cally be said of the man, " ye know not what manner of spirit 
ye are of." But the disposition, whether avaricious, ambitious, 
or voluptuous, has in it its own specific state of feeling. The 
avaricious man has feelings which neither the ambitious nor 
voluptuous man, as such, can have. A miser's feelings are not 
possible but in a miser's disposition. Physical organization and 
constitutional temperament may be of any modification ; but 
the avaricious sentiment cannot be without the disposition bent 
on hoarding money. Change that disposition and you change 
all these peculiar feelings without at all changing the constitu- 
tional nature. 

So, in a more eminent degree, and without here attending 
at all to the subjective manner in which the disposition is se- 
cured, let tlie whole bent of the mind be directed to the rule of 
right as its end, exclusive of any gratification that can come in 
conflict with i,t, and this is the disposition of the righteous man ; 
and in this disposition solely is the heart of the good man. No 
matter what his constitutional nature, he cannot feel as the 
good man does, nor sympathize at all in any sentiment he has. 



THE WILL. 219 

except as he has first attamed the good man's disposition. The 
virtuous feehng is nowhere else but in the virtuous disposition. 

Constitutional nature as it is, the tendency to constitutional 
feeling, whether animal or rational, is already in it ; and the oc- 
casion needs only to be presented, and the feeling necessarily 
follows. But no modification of constitutional nature can give 
the spiritual disposition. That must be induced in quite an- 
other process. The soul must dispose itself to the end of the 
spiritual imperative against all sense-appetite, holding the sense 
in subjection to the spirit, and in this only is the spiritual dispo- 
sition, with its intrinsic sentiment of righteousness and its still 
deeper heart of joy and peace, in conscious integrity and true 
dignity. 

2. Some of the prominent distinctions in sentiments. — When, 
as above given, there is the making up of the mind in reference 
to a particular occupation or pursuit in life, such a disposing of 
the soul's activity will in itself give the particular feelings and 
sympathies which belong to that employment, and which con- 
stitutes the tie of a class, by virtue of whose connecting bonds 
all the members are held together in kindred sentiment. This 
is a most widely operative principle in human society, and is at 
the basis of the multiplied castes, associations, and parties, into 
which mankind arrange themselves, and constitutes that esprit 
du corps which is so pervasive and effective in all party move- 
ments. So soon as the disposing of the soul in the direction to 
the party-end occurs, the susceptibility to its peculiar sentiment 
is possessed, and the tie of the class attaches. There may 
mingle the influences and interests of many constitutional grati- 
fications, but quite independently of all natural appetite or 
constitutional desire, the party sentiment is the common bond 
of attachment among the members. Varied as this may be in 
the multiplied associations of life, it forms a distinct class of 
psychical feehng, and whether for good or bad ends, and for 
the attaching of good or bad men together, it is everywhere the 



220 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

same principle of a kindred sentiment among those of a kindred 
pursuit, and is variously named as sectarian feeling, party 
spirit, denominational sentiment, class sympathy, etc. This 
tie of a class, though so pervading and effective through all 
communities, is still among the least prominent and less gen- 
erally noticed sentiments of psychical feeling. 

Among individuals there may be kindred interests, pursuits, 
and constitutional temperaments ; and these may render two, 
or any number of them, mutually congenial to each other, and 
the intercourse of such may be intimate and highly agreeable. 
But as yet there is no psychical sentiment, and thus no living 
bond of affection between them. The changes of business and 
pursuit, of interests and habits, may throw out some and intro- 
duce others, or even wholly remove the man to other conge- 
nial social circles, and he feels little loss and finds for it ready 
compensation. But when there has been a decided commit- 
ment of soul, and a reciprocal flowing out of the heart each to 
each, there is in this a union of dispositions ; and at once a 
cordiahty of feeling springs up, much deeper and sweeter than 
all the congenialities of common interest or similar tempera- 
ment. The sentiment of friendship is experienced, and like 
David and Jonathan, the soul of one is knit to the soul of the 
other. When this mutual commitment of soul is between two 
persons of different sexes, and to the end of exclusive connec- 
tion and cohabitation for life, the sentiment is that of connu- 
bial love, and becomes the tenderest and deepest of all human 
attachments. It is the blending oi personalities, and the source 
of all the connections of consanguinity. Neither the feelings 
of Friendship, nor of Connubial Love can be, without the 
actual commitment of the soul to the object, and thus the 
attainment of a permanent disposition, in which alone is the 
susceptibility to the cordial sentiment. 

So, when a man commits his soul to the highest advance- 
ment of the liberties and civilization of his country, he has the 



THE WILL. 221 

disposition of a patriot ; and in this, tiie susceptibility to every 
patriotic sentiment. No matter how strong the feehngs of self- 
interest, nor even how controlling the sentiment of party ; there 
is nothing of patriotism, until there is the disposing of the soul's 
activity to the end of his country's highest freedom, and in 
tliis patriotic disposition is the susceptibility to every patriotic 
feeling. 

The above are all instances of psychical sentiment, which 
cannot be said to be themselves radically distinctive of per- 
sonal moral character. The disposition, out of which the sus- 
ceptibihty to the feeling springs, is not sufficiently deep and 
controlhng to settle the question of moral character. Strong 
friendship, deep connubial love, and strenuous patriotism may 
be where there is no radical universal commitment to eter- 
nal righteousness. They are affections, sentiments, and they 
may be termed amiable ; but they are not properly virtues 
except as contained in a more radical spiritual disposition. 
Passing all these, and other similar sentiments, as though origi- 
nating in a disposition, yet not so deep as to be called virtuous, 
we turn to such as come completely within the sphere of moral 
goodness, and stamp the character as truly righteous. These 
will be of distinctive elevation, according to the elevation of the 
disposition. 

The purely ethical sentiments. — When the man has a spirit 
devoted to the ultimate rule of right, and which excludes every 
end that collides with its own highest excellency and worthi- 
ness, such disposing of the spiritual activity, in a permanent 
state, is a spiritual disposition, and in the comprehensiveness 
of its end, subordinating all that can conflict with it resolutely 
to it, it is a virtuous disposition, a flowing out towards right for 
its excellency's sake. In the very fact of attaining such a dis- 
position there is the securing of a susceptibility to feel all the 
sentiments which a good man ever experiences. Except in the 
virtuous disposition, the susceptibility to virtuous sentiment can- 



222 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

not be ; and thus, until the man's soul is disposed towards the 
right, exclusively, comprehensively, and permanently, he cannot 
by any possibiUty share in the good man's feelings. He can 
have no susceptibility to truly virtuous sentiments. In the dis- 
position is the spiritual susceptibiUty to all the complacency, 
joy, and blessedness of the truly moral man. As yet, the dis- 
position knows no higher end than the ultimate ethical right, 
and the exclusion of all gratifications that may conflict with 
the spiritual excellency, and thus the sentiments can rise no 
higher than the purely ethical. 

The religious sentiments. — When a man recognizes the being 
of a personal Deity, absolute in his own perfections, maker of 
himself and all things, and perpetual benefactor, and also 
recognizes his own dependence and accountabihty, there 
comes an occasion for the disposing of the spiritual activity to 
quite another and more exalted end than when simply con- 
templating the excellency of his own spiritual being. The 
devotion of all I am, and all I have, to this Absolute Lord, is 
my duty and his due. And now such a disposition actually 
attained at once induces a susceptibility to higher sentiments 
than the purely ethical. The feelings of rehgious confidence, 
divine gratitude and love, adoring praise and worship, immedi- 
ately break forth, and I have all the glad experience of the 
truly religious man. The feelings could not be until first the 
disposition were attained ; but this disposition is found in no 
constitutional temperament, and only in the supreme bent and 
inclination of the soul towards God. 

The truly Christian sentiments. — When the man as a con- 
scious sinner, helpless and hopeless in his condemnation, recog- 
nizes the crucified and ascended Redeemer, by whose gracious 
interposition he knows that all his own morality and all his 
religion are induced, and that, through repentance and faith, 
pardon and justification with God may be applied for the 
Redeemer's sake, and this consistently with every claim of God 



THE WILL. 223 

and his whole government, there is, then, an occasion for a dis- 
position of spirit more than merely religious. And when a dispo- 
sition, directly going out and fixing upon this crucified Saviour, 
as the only source of help and hope, is truly possessed, it has 
in it a susceptibility to feelings which no merely religious devo- 
tion to God in the man's own name can ever attain. The love 
that has much forgiven ; the gratitude for grace imparted ; the 
confiding constancy, which owes all and commits all to this 
only Saviour ; all these Chrisdan sentiments now come out, and 
the spirit glows with emotions to which angels must themselves 
be strangers. Till this disposing of the soul on Christ, this 
susceptibihty to Christian feeling and sentiment was impossible. 
The source of the feeling is nowhere else but in the Christian 
disposition. 

Christian love is widely distinct from any constitutional feel- 
ing. A love of the Lord Jesus Christ is possible only as the 
spiritual disposition has gone out towards him. So long as the 
spirit is disposed on some other object, the feeling of Christian 
love cannot be : there is no heart to it. The rehgious claims 
induced in the apprehension of the truth regarding Christ are 
unwelcome and their pressure becomes irksome, and hence the 
feelings of aversion and hatred are the necessary result of press- 
ing Christian truth upon an unchristian disposition. Evangeli- 
cal Repentance has the same law in the mind for its exercise. 
As a feeling, it is godly sorrow for sin. That spirit which is 
fully disposed towards Jesus Christ cannot look upon sins, at 
any time committed, without feelings of penitential grief; while 
another spirit is fully set against Christ, and the dishonor which 
sin occasions to Christ is no occasion of sorrow to such a soul, 
nor can any view of sin against Christ bring out from such a 
disposition any other feehng than hardened impenitence. The 
disposition must change or there is no susceptibihty to godly 
sorrow. Evangelical Faith, in so far forth as it is a joyful con- 
fidence in Christ as a Saviour, is a feeling, and springs from the 



224 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

heart of a Christian disposition, like Christian love and repent- 
ance. Of all proposed methods of salvation, the spirit has 
gone out to Christ in his appointed way, and with such a dispo- 
sition a new feeling of confiding security and sweet reliance is 
at once called into exercise. But let the disposition go out 
after any other Saviour, and this feeling of confiding Christian 
repose cannot be in exercise. 

So of all Christian sentiment ; there must first be the Christian 
disposition, or there can be no susceptibility to the feeling. The 
modifications of no constitutional susceptibility can secure them. 
They are spiritual, and distinct from all other spiritual emotions, 
in that they originate in a heart which finds its being only in a 
Christian disposition. 

The general distinction between the psychical sentiments only 
and the spiritual sentiments may expound the general fact in 
experience, that good men are so often warped in their decisions 
by their party ties. The party has been so sincerely adopted, 
and its sentiments have been so fondly cherished, that these 
have come into the place and taken the authority of truly ethical 
and religious convictions, and are permitted to sway the judg- 
ment as if they possessed the dignity and worth of the spirit. 

3. llie point of responsibility in the spiritual sentimeiits. It 
is quite necessary to note that neither the heart itself nor any of 
its exercises are the immediate products of the will. They are 
never volitions, and cannot be directly willed into being. They 
are as necessary in their conditions as those that belong to con- 
stitutional nature. The disposition being given, the heart is 
determined in it ; and then to this heart, the occasions being 
supplied, the specific feelings are necessitated. How then may 
I be commanded to sorrow for sin? to rejoice in the Lord? or 
to feel the complacency of the virtuous man? 

Were these sentiments the product of constitutional nature, 
we could have no responsibihty for them. All men participate 
in the constitutional feehngs in virtue of their common human- 



THE WILL. 225 

ity. Difference of degree will make no difference in kind, and 
what the susceptibility is has been determined in the constitu- 
tion giv^en by the Creator. This can be changed only by a 
physical power which changes the constitution. That the lion 
should eat straw like the ox would demand that the physical 
structure should be wholly changed. That known transgression 
should escape remorse would demand that the man lose his ra- 
tional spirit. The constitutional feelings are without the sphere 
of responsibiHty. 

But in one radical point the heart, as we now contemplate it, 
completely differs. Constitutional nature continuing unchanged, 
the heart changes in the change of disposition. The heart must 
be as the disposition is, and hence, so far as man is responsible 
for his disposition, he is consequently responsible for the heart 
and the feelings which are determined in it. In this disposing 
of the soul's activity, there may be various ends to which it is 
directed that shall be altogether too limited to determine there- 
from any moral character. A good man and a bad man may 
both be disposed to the. same employment for life, and have all 
the kindred feelings which come in under the tie of a class, and 
such disposition determines nothing in respect to their radical 
character. The disposition is not yet brought under the de- 
termination of a rule of right. But let it be known that this 
disposition towards the calling for life is involved in a broader 
disposition towards the right, the authority of God, or the will 
of Jesus Christ as a Saviour, and such broader disposition will 
have its radical character, giving also its own character to the 
subordinate disposition of the mind towards its objects of pur- 
suit. Thus always shall we be able to determine any lower dis- 
posing of the spiritual activity upon its end by the character of 
the broader ; and that disposition, which is inclusive of the 
universal right as end, must give its radical character to the 
man and all his minor dispositions of spirit. A disposition 
towards God, in Christ Jesus, to the exclusion of all that can 



226 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

Stand in opposition must be radically a holy disposition ; and a 
disposition towards anything else as end, to the exclusion of 
God in Christ, must be a sinful disposition radically. 

As then radical moral character is as the generic disposition 
of the man, so the heart which is in this disposition will have 
its character accordingly, and all its sentiments will participate 
in the same. So far thus as the man is responsible for his radi- 
cal character is he responsible for his heart and all its senti- 
ments and emotions. A change of heart is thus nothing other 
than a change of the disposition in which the heart lies. 

Section IV. : The completed Will in Liberty completes 
Empirical Psychology. The attainment of the higher faculty 
of Reason completed the Empirical Science of the Intellect, by 
its capability to induce a precedent causal efficiency compre- 
hensive of all the distinguishable forces of nature, and while 
its induction of pure space and time capacitated it to 
connect all places and periods with their uniform order of 
collated and successive phenomena into one common experi- 
ence for all humanity, thus putting natural forces and mental 
activities in exact mutual correspondence. In like manner, the 
attained faculty of Reason gave the Ethic and Theistic emotions, 
which comprehended and regulated the sensual appetites and 
psychical estimates of greater happiness on the whole, and so 
completed the empirical science of the susceptibility. And 
now, just here, we have completed the science of free will by 
the attainment of rational spirit as the common endowment of 
humanity, and by it have subjected all lower interests to the 
sway of its ethical imperative, thereby putting freedom, radical 
disposition, righteous sentiment, and a holy heart in perpetual 
conformity and community. It will be most interesting and 
important if we now retrace the outlines of the Psychology thus 
completed in this completed science of the spiritual will in 
liberty. 

On one side of what may be indifferently termed the calcu- 



THE WILL. 22/ 

lating mind or the estimating soul, is the general susceptibility 
to sensual gratification, which may comprehensively be known 
as appetitive indulgence. This must, firom the nature of the 
case, carry with it strong and abiding propensities. The con- 
tinuance of individual life and the reproduction of all animal 
species depend on gratified appetites, whose indulgence is 
therefore too important to be left to other than quite urgent 
impulses. But if the executive energies are left only to the 
impetuous appetite, there can be none other than the passionate 
alternations of brute-will in perpetually unregulated recurrence. 
If there come in the intervention of thought and judgment 
making carefully prudential calculations and conclusions, and 
applying strict scientific experiments for practical regulation, 
by which all passionate estimates are excluded and only salutary 
enjoyments are allowed, this will doubtless be of great conser- 
vative expediency and utiUty, but it can attain to no ultimate 
self-determination and personal will in liberty. The rule of 
highest enjoyment with the least injury is thus found, but it is 
appetitive indulgence still, and the only good is sensual happi- 
ness presented in the highest attainable degree, in accordance 
with which the executive agency must work without an alter- 
native. 

The craving must be for the, knowing or the using, and the 
satisfaction in knowing must ultimately terminate in the more 
profitable using. i\ll physical science is experience tested by 
the senses, and if such a use of the senses is to any one the 
highest enjoyment, he will strive to know either for himself or 
others to use, and the interest in knowing will be lost when the 
science can minister to no appetite. The cheerful, the pleas- 
ant work is not on its own account, but in the end of some 
utility for coming experience. Whether known as kindness, or 
prudence, or patriotism, or philanthropy, the sentiment had in 
it no interest but for some earthly good, and the will could 
execute itself only in the service of some worldly advantage. 



228 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

The calculating, estimating agency has adopted the sentiment, 
and the executive energy, blended and characterized by the 
appetitive desire, passes out to possession and gratification. 
It is a servile will, which has no master but the soul concluding 
and acting for its highest happiness without any alternative, and 
no deductions from the uniform order of experience can rai^e 
this servile will from its bondage to sense-gratification into the 
sphere of a will in liberty. 

But the whole scene changes when we contemplate man as 
endowed with rational spirit. The soul is not left helpless in the 
one-sided domination of sense-indulgence, but has an adequate 
counter-check to every exorbitant appetite in the imperatives 
imposed by the standards of taste in art, of truth in philosophy, 
and more especially by the ethical rule of right and the religious 
law of God. In all these cases the soul is put in peril of spirit- 
ual debasement if it does not give instant and constant heed to 
the mandates of reason. 

In the sphere of Esthetic Taste there are the graded stages 
of propriety, courtesy, decency, and artistic elegance and 
beauty ; and with each stage but one pure form can be the 
perfect pattern and ultimate standard for universal acceptation. 
This pure form the insight of the spirit alone can attain and im- 
pose upon the soul as imperative for its adoption and practical 
execution. In the field of fine art, especially of high art, the 
most carefully cultivated insight is requisite to catch the pure 
form in exact proportion, expression, attitude, and grouping of 
the critical ideal, though the executive attainment of it can be 
only in modified measure and varied degrees of comparative 
excellence. But the rational pure form, so far as attained, frees 
the artist from meretricious interferences and sensuous degra- 
tions. It is the soul's ultimate rule. 

Again, in the province of Philosophic Truth, there are the 
varied collocations of phenomenal properties and qualities pass- 
ing through their changes in regulated sequences, each having 



. THE WILL. 229 

its efficient causality adequate to secure the fact and invariable 
order of the succession ; but while science can recognize the 
fact and order and make its deductions and estimated measures 
and values, it is the rational spirit alone that has the insight to 
induce and convincingly acknowledge the pure causal force, 
precedent to the phenomenal fact and order, and sufficient to 
produce them. And while the rational spirit can give its cause 
for each series of changes, as scientific experiment tries them 
over, it can go further than this, and can take up the ultimate 
forces that are sufficient reasons for all physical changes, and in 
them give the philosophic laws by which the universal move- 
ments of nature are effected. The philosophy is yet to come, 
but the precedent causes that regulate the sequences, as careful 
scientific testing attains them, go along with the changes in the 
spirit's insight and make the empirical science a connected, 
classified, and consistent process of realities just as far as expe- 
rience reaches. Experience itself has in this its actual causal 
connections. 

But further and of more importance is the recognition by the 
soul of its spiritual endowment, and of the possibiHty thus opened 
for it to enter the field of pure ethical right and duty. The sci- 
ence which acknowledges for the human mind only the capa- 
bility to observe and make deductions from the uniform facts 
of nature, can recognize nothing further for man than that he 
carefully and candidly compute the consequences of different 
methods in the use of the senses, and then that he regulate his 
active life by the prudential rule of highest sum total of happi- 
ness upon the whole, both in regard to his own interest and in 
the claims of benevolence toward others. But this will exclude 
all cases of fact in experience where imperatives and obligations 
come from the pure consideration of personal honor and the 
worthiness and dignity of the integrity of character alone. 
Every man has frequent conscious convictions that his own 
honest approbation of his life and character is of much higher 



230 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

moment to himself than any sense-indulgence ; and that while 
all sense-experience may be comfortable or at least tolerable, 
his own " wounded spirit he cannot bear." Many a man .lives 
and dies more self-satisfied and peaceful in his hearty, radically 
right disposition than in all the sensuous gratification he ever 
has had or has imparted to others. But all this can come from 
nothing other than an endowment of and allegiance to a ra- 
tional spirit. " To be carnally-minded is death, but to be spirit- 
ually-minded is life and peace." 

So, moreover, with a personally religious disposition. A deep 
conviction that man is spiritual and not merely sentient, and 
that his highest integrity and dignity of character are in his 
deepest subserviency of sense to spirit will, in the necessity of 
the case, force one to recognize the being and claims of other 
spirits, and most certainly the being and claims of the supreme 
spirit, and to feel that the deepest and purest religious disposi- 
tion is that which knows itself most exalted in its most reverent 
devotion to God. This is an utter exclusion of all superstition 
or hypocrisy, for it wholly repudiates all religion from fear and 
from selfishness as well, and worships only from dehghted com- 
munion of spirit with spirit. There is some, and it may be 
trusted there is an increasing amount, of this pure religious 
devotion to God, but it can neither be acknowledged nor expe- 
rienced save as man's spirituality of being has first been recog- 
nized. There is no adequate reason for such religious disposi- 
tion till first man know his own spirituality, and God as the 
Father of spirits. Without such acknowledgment of human and 
divine spirituality all pure religion is an absurdity. 

So, lastly, with a personally sinful disposition. There are 
many facts of carelessness, frivolity, caprice, improvidence, and 
imprudence which may be compassed and expounded by a 
defective or erroneous judgment and false estimate of the soul, 
and a more careful test of experiment and rigid inductions 
therefrom may correct them and help to their avoidance in 



THE WILL. 231 

future. But there will still be many facts in human practical 
experience that cannot be covered or interpreted by any de- 
fects and subsequent corrections of logical conclusions. 

When a man becomes easily, and at length quite habitually, 
voluptuous, ambitious, miserly, or fraudulent, there is much 
more wrong in the facts than hasty judgments and false esti- 
mates j and this can never be met and corrected by any review 
of the mere logical process. There is a conviction of moral 
unrighteousness, personal debasement, violated integrity, and 
thus of conscious sin, guilt, and unavoidable self-disapproba- 
tion. Nothing can fully account for these sinful facts but the 
recognition of a spiritual endowment disregarded and dishon- 
ored. 

And when the disposition has become deeper and the execu- 
tive will more confirmed in sensuahty, and the hardened trans- 
gressor is obliged to say, from the consciousness of his growing 
slavery to indulgence, that he cannot break his bondage, and 
yet is also obliged to feel that his very helplessness is only an 
aggravation of his guilt in his more deeply-rooted determination 
to transgress, we are the more clear that no mending of mis- 
takes in logical estimates is to be of any account in either in- 
terpreting or correcting the growing iniquity. There is the 
conviction manifest in the very confession that conscious guilt 
is keeping pace with conscious confirmation in wickedness. 
The imperative is perpetual that the sinner break his chain, and 
he knows that the alternative to indulgence is ever open, and 
that if he chose he might beat back the appetite to subjection. 
But how so choose ? When his soul has become pleased with 
forbidden gratification, how shall it get the pleasing to the 
directly contrary executive volition? And yet in this wicked 
pleasing to persist in sinful indulgence, which he is forced to 
admit is only adequately expressed by saying he cannot break 
from it, while, on the other hand, this pleasing to sin is, he 
knows, his pleasing and his sin, what a paradox is found ! and 



232 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

how impossible to remove it by any logical correctives ! If 
there is but a judging and estimating soul, then there is no 
alternative to the last dictate, and the will must go to the highest 
happiness on the whole ; and we can never confirm the good 
man's estimate of sin and guilt nor convict the sinner of his 
freedom and responsibility. But if there is an endowment of 
rational spirit, then the sinner's guilt is certain, and his freedom 
and responsibility in his deepest pleasing is his own disposition 
and at his accountability, and for all the facts in the case, and 
for all righteous and sinful conduct in human experience, we 
have a full explanation. Every man shall bear his own burden. 

By no possible logical process can the facts in common 
experience which belong to the Intellect, the Susceptibility, and 
the Will be ascertained, classified, and put together in a com- 
plete system of empirical science, without the attainment and 
use of the distinctively higher faculty of Reason as superinduced 
upon the sense and the understanding. But by the attainment 
of this faculty and its use as inductive, we have, by a thorough 
scientific process of testing experiments, put all facts of experi- 
ence, as knowing, feeling, and wilhng, into one classified and 
connected series, and now have them complete and consistent 
from their original to the present period, and with both the 
beginning and present extremes open for further regressive or 
progressive scientific review, should occasion require. The sci- 
entific testing may be repeated at pleasure for any fact or for its 
connected classification or its consisent unity in the system, by 
any competent and careful scientist. 

This use of the Reason has given occasion, in the facts of 
will, to apply the terms soul and spirit in the place of under- 
standing and reason, and so we have the sense, soul, and spirit, 
as combining in the executive energizing of will in liberty. 
The sense in its appetitive urgency is mere brute will ; the sense 
and soul together in judging of consequences and estimating 
highest urgencies gave a regulated executive, but as this is ever 



THE WILL. 233 

in the end of highest gratification on the whole, it is thus ever 
a will in servitude. The estimating soul standing between the 
appetitive sense and the imperative spirit gave the only position 
for subjecting gratification to spiritual approbation, and thus the 
necessary condition for free election, with its executive energy 
and open alternative ; and it also gave full compass and inter- 
pretation to all facts of moral responsibility, both as righteous 
and sinful. The competency to righteousness is ever in the 
personal constitution as an original and inalienable rational 
endowment, and the impotency to the right is ever in a pre- 
vious radical disposition, which is ever at the responsibility of 
the personal agent who so disposes of his voluntary energy. 

This introduction of the faculty of reason as an authorized 
imperative for the induction of precedent adequate causation, 
in order to all uniform order in experience and all freedom in 
ethics, gives occasion for another division in general empirical 
science. To physical science and psychical science already 
distinguished, we must now add spiritual science ; in all cases 
the science is in the careful testing of the experience, and the 
qualifying term indicates the category to which the tested facts 
belong, whether to nature or to the sentient soul or to the sov- 
ereign spirit. Physics and psychical logic cannot deal at all with 
morals and religion, and such facts can be covered and ex- 
pounded by rational spirit only. The spirit of man alone knows 
"the things of a man," and this only can search out and com- 
mune in and with "the deep things of God." 



FOURTH DIVISION. 



A COMPLETE EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY GIVES AN OPEN 
DOOR FOR A UNIVERSAL PHILOSOPHY. 

THE Psychology now completed is a classified sj-stem of 
all the powers and activities of the human Mind, but 
this could not have been effected except as the mind's endow- 
ment of rational spirit had been acknowledged, since the more 
important facts of ethical and theistic emotions in the suscep- 
tibihty, and the sesthetic, philosophic, ethic, and religious execu- 
tives of a will in liberty, all originate in the recognition of this 
high faculty of human reason. 

But this acknowledged attainment of reason in psychology 
is of still greater import in the completion of empirical science 
in general. Not only could not the most important facts in 
psychology have been otherwise attained, but the connection 
of all physical and psychical facts of experience, if attained, 
could not have been so effected as to make of the whole an 
exact and consistent universal system. Scientific experiment 
might classify the facts ascertained in experience, but science 
without reason must ever remain incompetent to compass and 
expound experience itself. 

Section I. : The proper Province of Philosophy. We have 
now a Psychology which recognizes man's spiritual endowment, 
and which enables us intelligibly to use the facts and function 
of the reason in the full exposition of the common experience. 
In this an effectual door is opened to a Philosophy, no other- 

234 



AN OPEN DOOR FOR PHILOSOPHY. 235 

wise attainable, which may bring the tested facts of common 
experience not only into assorted classes, but may also put all 
the classes into an exactly ensphered universality ; the philoso- 
phy finishing the science which had else, as ever before, re- 
mained an utterly insoluble problem. This reason-philosophy 
is the sure and safe authority for a science henceforth incon- 
testable. 

This philosophy finds its test in a tried experience, as truly as 
does the logic of the understanding, but the test of the philosophy 
is solely the trial of sentiments postulated in the reason, quite 
beyond the trial of sensations reflected in the understanding. 
Humanity is as truly endowed with rational spirit as with a logi- 
cal soul, and the spirit has its conscious experience as real as 
that of the sentient soul, but while the latter is and can be only 
deductive, the spirit is convincingly and indisputably inductive 
when correctly tested, and the true philosophy rests entirely 
on an unmistakable appeal to rational experience. If as 
rational beings we propound our spiritual problems, and then 
delusively undertake to expound them by psychical deductions, 
we may well expect both anomahes and antinomies. But if 
spiritual things be spiritually discerned, they will be far more 
infallibly convincing than any logical conclusion to the future, 
from a past observation. A true spiritual philosophy is ultimate 
and inviolate, and can be questioned by no one who does not 
assume that reason may be begotten of unreason. And even 
such assumption may and must be abolished by throwing the 
infatuated personality back upon the conscious rights of his 
own rationality, which he will infallibly be found to defend so 
stubbornly that we shall then know his spirituality haS to him 
become an assured reality. When put to the torture of its own 
remorse the spirit of humanity will in any man betray its con- 
sciously offended dignity, and the biting back of outraged rea- 
son is as sure if not as poignant in aesthetics and philosophy as 
in morality and religion. We only need to make the absurdity 



236 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

Stand staringly out to the spiritual insight, and it will be not 
only exposed but condemned. A true philosophy will distin- 
guish itself from all counterfeits, by putting itself and them to 
the fair and full test of rational experiment. 

Empirical science restricts itself to the testing of common 
experience by new experiments of passing facts, and then 
deduces from their uniform order the connections and relations 
of all empirical objects and their changes. It keeps itself 
within experience, tests and classifies its facts, but to complete 
itself as science it must make all classified facts coalesce in a 
consistent system ; and this eludes all attempts for its accom- 
plishment while shut within experience. The task for philoso- 
phy is in some way to comprehend and systematize experience 
from the study and classification of the single facts of experi- 
ence, and while possible only by induction through the insight 
of reason, has yet been attempted mainly in the exclusion or 
misapplication of all use of the reason. It may best subserve 
our purpose to show how our complete Psychology opens the 
door to a true Philosophy, if we here most succinctly show some 
of the more venerable, and later some of the most remarkable, 
instances of this misapprehension of what is demanded of phi- 
losophy in the interest and completeness of a scientific system. 
These deficiencies and deceptive pretensions to an effective 
philosophy may prepare us more fairly to appreciate the better 
pathway opened in a better Psychology. 

Section II. : Insufficient Theories for comprehending all 
Facts of Experience in one consistent System. It has been 
comparatively a plain and easy work to determine the facts of 
experience in their likenesses and differences, and thus to 
arrange them in distinctive classes, but to put the distinctive 
classes of physical, psychical, and spiritual facts together in one 
exact system has been the great problem of the ages. From 
the dawn of philosophy the distinctions of abiding and changing 
realities have been noted, and the difficulty of combining the 



AN OPEN DOOR FOR PHILOSOPHY. 23/ 

two in unity has very commonly induced the attempt to in 
some way account for both through the transformations of one 
or the other, so that from the first we have some who say : " all 
things stand," while others quite as peremptorily affirm: "all 
things flow." At the present age we have large numbers who 
determine all facts of consciousness from the objective side of 
experience ; and others, perhaps as many, who determine all 
content in consciousness from the side of subjective activity ; 
and then others divide in assuming respectively that there is an 
outer or an inner being, while each class uses, in constructing its 
system, only the opposite agency of that which it assumes barely 
to be. We will outHne some of these sufficiently to clearly 
mark their defects, and to show that we must use the higher 
faculty of reason if the objective and subjective shall both be 
embraced. 

I. The Ai'istotelian Prime Philosophy. — No account is made 
in this philosophy of any other than abiding conceptions, and 
these are attained and used as merely mental abstractions and 
generalizations. Only what has already been in the sense is 
taken into the understanding and is there elaborated into con- 
ceptions, judgments, and syllogistic conclusions. In preparation 
for the logic, the uniform collocations of the sense are taken as 
individuals, and such as are similar, each to each, are put 
together, and, passing over their individual differences and 
noting the likeness they have in common, these like individuals 
are" abstracted and placed in groups respectively under their 
common name, and such specific group is known as an abstract 
species. Then similar species, rejecting their slighter differ- 
ences, are abstracted and named, and such more generalized 
group is known as a genus ; and a repetition of abstracted 
likenesses through graded genera at length comes to an ulti- 
mate abstraction and generalization that is a pure conception 
of the observations of all experience, and is here abstracted 
from all content. Such ultimate generalization is known as 



238 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

pu7'e being, of which nothing can be predicated and for which, 
thus, no judgment can be formed, and which henceforth stands 
out beyond all logical use for the understanding. The subor- 
dinate genera and species may be used as particular concep- 
tions to put in an individual judgment, which may then be 
taken as a general first premise in a syllogism, and made con- 
clusive for all the particulars it contains. The entire system of 
the Aristotelian logic may thus be determined, but it is not 
possible that its logical thought can complete empirical science 
by concluding all subordinate rejected genera and species in 
systematic universality, since its ultimate generic of pure being 
has already gone beyond logical predication. But just here, 
where abstract logic fails, the First Philosophy begins, and uses 
the abstraction of pure being most scrupulously within its rule 
of never transcending experience, even while it yet attempts by 
it to comprehend all experience in systematic unity. 

This abstract pure being is in conception the superficial com- 
pass and periphery of all experience ; it is the retained matter 
in thought of all sense-observation which has been abstracted 
from all difference in form, all formal difference now lying with- 
out it. Thus all experience is separated into matter and form^ 
which are the abstract counterparts of each other. The mat- 
ter which has been abstracted from all form can be again put 
into any form, and is thus material cause, or the potentiality of 
form ; the form from which the matter has been abstracted can 
be again put upon the matter, and is thus formal cause, or the 
actuality of matter. But this material and formal causahty, 
whether as potential or actual, is permissive and problematic 
only, and in neither case carries with it any efficiency or cer- 
tainty. Something more is needed before we can have any 
science that the potential matter will take on all, or even any, 
actual form, and the philosophy goes on in the following way 
to supply this manifest need. 

The pure being is an open conception, ready and favorable 



AN OPEN DOOR FOR PHILOSOPHY. 239 

to reception of form, even inviting to the coming in of any 
form, and is hereby known as moving cause. When this mov- 
ing cause is taken as Primum Mobile or First Cause, it must 
move without itself moving, which it does by being itself favor- 
able, and even desirable, to any and every form. And still as 
moving cause it must have its end in the moving, without which 
there could be no occasion or condition for the moving. This 
makes it necessary that the moving cause be also final cause 
as well, but as this must be without preventing at all the mov- 
ing cause from moving without itself being moved, it is also 
necessary that there be the same end both to matter and form, 
the end in each being the completion and satisfaction of both. 
Thus the matter gets its form, and the form gets itself on the 
matter, through a comple mental energy in both matter and 
form, which is the e7itelechy or ultimate essence and energy of 
the Aristotelian Philosophy. 

But when put to the test of an actual experiment, the ambi- 
guity of all this is at once exposed, and it becomes manifest that 
the process has all along been putting the thought of the thing 
for the reality of the thing. We think the abstract surface of 
the experienced universal to be potential for taking back into 
it all the forms that it has been abstracted from, and this think- 
ing of the forms back within the pure conception of being is 
their actuality. The potential is, in truth, what cannot be 
except as an efficient causality be found instead of the mere 
thinking, and the actuality, in truth, is the forms put back one 
at a time in scientific experiment instead of in possible thought. 
The moving cause, in truth, is a supreme being loved by all 
and drawing all to him, instead of an empty conception capable 
of admitting all in thought ; and a final cause is, in truth, an 
end of worthiness in supreme sovereignty itself, instead of an 
empty capacity on one side for the end of receiving, and an 
unbounded fulness on the other side for the end of filling, in 
thought, this universal vacancy. The philosophy deceiv^es itself 



240 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

and deludes others by making its exhausted abstractions the 
adequate vouchers for substantial realities and efficient agencies. 
The abstract matter is too thin for any reahty, and is being only 
for thought, while the excluded form is put out from the actual 
and has recognition only in the thinking, and yet this actual in 
thinking put back into the thought-being is assumed to be valid 
for real matter in actual form. And then, further, if this were 
fully admitted, it would at the best be putting the conception 
of matter and form back precisely as it was in experience at the 
beginning of the logical abstraction and generahzation, leaving 
the matter and form just as inexplicable at the philosophic 
conclusion as at its beginning. The Philosophy has thus 
manifested itself to be intrinsically unable to do the work of 
Philosophy. 

2. The Hegelian Philosophy. — This is the direct contrast of 
the former. It seeks to comprehend all experience by the 
determinations of the subjective side of consciousness only. 
It abstracts from universal experience a pure spontaneous 
thought-process alone. The Logic assumes to start with pure 
being, which, not coming within any possible predication, is 
thus as if equal to nothing, while its abstract extent, left out 
of the conception, is the non-being, known as nonght, and is 
equal to nothing. At this zero point the pure spontaneity 
starts in activity, and as to affirm being is at the same time 
to negate non-being, while a negation of non-being is but a 
re-affirmation of being, we have, in the necessary limitation 
of the one by the other, a logical circuit which determines 
the being as Quality. The quality is, per se, isolate, and a 
nature is assumed for it which spontaneously tends to pass 
its limit and seek others in the abstract extent beyond, while 
they also spontaneously tend towards it, and in this mutual 
gravitation the isolate being becomes being for others, and 
is now Quantity. The quality limited in its outgoing is exten- 
sive quantity or the quantum ; limited in the incoming, it is inten- 



AN OPEN DOOR FOR PHILOSOPHY. 24I 

sive quantity or the degree; and the qualitative ratio of the 
quantum and the degree becomes Measure. Passing beyond 
the measure, the being becomes another genus and grows 
on towards another quahtative ratio, in passing which another 
transformation is begotten, while that which passes through 
all measures, and is in all genera, is the Essence. 

Essence is thus perpetually hidden in internality, and is 
entirely within the possession of the thinking spontaneity, and 
subjected solely to its determinations in correspondence with 
its own complemental conditions. Such co-operation induces 
the three following Relations: when Essence is barely thought 
out into externality, it is the relation of substance and its mani- 
festation ; when undergoing its qualitative determinations in 
kind, it is the relation of cause and effect ; and when in coales- 
cence essence and spontaneity complement each other, it is the 
relation of co-action, and as the spring of all objective cognition 
is known as Actuality. 

In this last relation the logic has attained a thinking-agency 
which grasps all experience and has become more than abstract 
thought-process, even a thinking agent with power to shut and 
open all being from or into actual recognition. But this think- 
ing agency has the essence now in its internality only, and logic 
can do no more for science. Internality must come out into 
externality ; logical involution must take on actual evolution j 
and both physical and spiritual being must stand forth each in 
its exact phase of manifest recognition for place and period. 
To show how this is done is the special work of this Philosophy. 

Logic has thus prepared for, and here passes into Philosophy^ 
which is applied to the task in hand with much minuteness of 
detail and with long extension. It is important specially to 
note the point we start from, and the end we seek, and the 
means for locomotion we must use, in order that from the out- 
set we may estimate what satisfactory progress from day to day 
we may be making in our journey. All past experience is now 



242 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

in the thinking agency, just as the logic has folded it in ; and 
we now make it our philosophic design to externalize the whole 
in orderly and complete progression, as the only way to come, 
at last, to its full recognition, remembering that in the entire 
journey we can travel only by the use of such agencies in 
experience as we may make available, and which in their own 
natures work wholly of their own accord. We must think spon- 
taneously, with no help from outside conditions. This is the 
genius of the philosophy, as that of the Aristotelian was, to think 
with pure matters that had lost their properties. The Aristo- 
telian philosophy abstracted conceptions from all forms; the 
Hegelian abstracts activities from their precedent occasions. 
Thought is taken to be pure spontaneity. The isolate quality 
in logic tended in its own nature to pass into the beyond, 
and the beyond tended to pass into it, and these complemental 
seekings make gravity, and such co-operative agencies must 
make up all our efficiencies. 

All experience has logically infolded itself, and it now spon- 
taneously seeks to unfold itself ; it was its logical abstraction to 
be internahty ; it is now its philosophical evolution to become 
externality, and it needs nothing but that we watch its own 
mode of development, and in this alone recognize its only law 
of spontaneity. One must follow out the author's long march 
through every step to appreciate its exceedingly comprehen- 
sive minuteness and exactness ; but a much more summary 
outline will make manifest its insufficiency. 

I. Mechanics. In passing from the internality to external 
being the essence of all experience must have : First, its place 
and period, which as abstract from the experience can be only 
the place and period in the experience, and not the absolute 
Space and Time in which all experience itself must be, though 
it is taken in the philosophy as properly Space and Time. 
This gives us what is known as Abstract Mechanics. Secondly, 
there must be particular places and periods for the particulars 



AN OPEN DOOR FOR PHILOSOPHY. 243 

in experience ; and, in the limitation of these, by the tendency 
of quality to pass beyond its border, there must enter virtually 
both iiiatter and motion, in which we have what is known as 
Finite Mechanics. Thirdly, there must then come the sponta- 
neous transition of the essence in its nature to pass into the 
beyond, whereby its place and period will be filled ; and in this 
we have what is known as Absolute Mechanics. It should be 
remarked that gravity, in its transition to the external, as yet 
empty, can have no reciprocity and thus no other than an ideal 
centrality ; and that the Mechanical agency, internal and exter- 
nal, can have no regulative action and reaction, and so no con- 
ditioning save only in its own native spontaneities. 

2. Physics. Gravity alone cannot guide the thought to any 
point in unity, and is here supplemented by calHng up from the 
inner experience the action of Light, and making it a counter- 
working with gravity. 

Light, as taken in this philosophy, is spontaneous in its own 
nature, is without gravity, and its action is directly out and 
back, thus constantly moving in a right line which is perpetually 
refilled by its own return movement. It acts in all ways except 
as against gravity, and thus from all quarters meets in and 
returns from the gravitating centre, making that ideal central- 
ity thus a perpetually revolving Sun, while its antithesis of with- 
drawing from an open point, and leaving it in shade, is the 
production of planetary matter. Lunar matter is light and 
gravity in petrified coalescence, and cometary matter is disper- 
sive and volatile, tending to dissipation. The stars, in this 
philosophy, are luminous points, and the interagency of light 
and gravity is a perpetual digestion of the latter by the former 
into the produced elements of air, water, fire, and earthy mate- 
rial. This elementary production, everywhere diffused, is per- 
petually gathered and collocated by its interacting spontanei- 
ties in the Meteorological process. Material gravity as mass 
becomes in this process specific gravity in every part of the 



244 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

same body, making the consideration of volume in the body 
necessary to its determination. Cohesion, as peculiarity of 
internal construction and so of capability to induce sound and 
internal heat, is the product of light acting on gravity, and when 
carried to its ultimate, terminates in the shapelessness of liquid 
water, liquid sound, or liquid flame, and in order to shape mat- 
ter into individuality, further repeated resort in internality for 
the externally shaping agencies is necessary. 

Magnetism is next taken, and its polarities give shape to one 
body; Electricity gives its polarities to two bodies, till at its 
extreme tension a spark dissolves their connection. The crys- 
talization induced by the polarities and the transmission of light 
through rarer into denser transparencies give occasion for a 
peculiar theory of colors, and the ongoing of inner combustion 
in certain bodies determines their capabilities to give out their 
respective smells. And then Galvanism, as an amalgam of 
metality and electricity, induces the gases that give their acids and 
alkalies, from which come the chemical processes of composi- 
tion in neutral salts and decomposition through elective affini- 
ties, and final rest in substances different from those in which 
the chemism commenced, so breaking up the circuit and 
making a continual chemical process impossible. All shaping 
processes by physical agencies are thus interrupted, and a total 
individuahty of experience is, as yet, physically impossible, 
except by the introduction of inner life into externality, from 
which comes — 

Organics. Vital or organic chemism takes its ternary and 
quaternary combinations and perpetuates its process indefinitely, 
which no binary compositions in physical chemistry could reach. 
The life-force is still taken in natural spontaneity by this* phi- 
losophy, just as had been the gravity, light, and all polarities 
in physics, differing only in this, that life with its equivalents 
in carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen, was a perpetuated 
process, which finally induces a total individuality of all par- 



AN OPEN DOOR FOR PHILOSOPHY. 245 

ticularized experiences. The planetary mass thus entering into 
the externahty of hving combinations, enters into a process of 
shaping and framing operations which give a skeleton basis for 
further forth-coming organisms. Granite, stratified rock, and 
disintegrated alluvium shape the continents and ocean beds, 
and insulated and promontory head-lands, and all the inner 
and outer spontaneities conspire to fit a frame-work for organic 
manifestations. This is known as Geological Organic s. 

Life, then, begins its manifestation in the waters, on the land, 
in the air, and geologic Nature has manifestly reached an era 
of spontaneous organic productions. Plant-life first appears 
in the waters and the moistened soils of continents and islands, 
with all varieties of root, stock, and leafy branches, and with 
reproductive sex-distinctions, and yet all elongations and con- 
nected propagations from the one stock. Distinctive individ- 
ualities do not ^rise in plants. This is known as Vegetable 
Organics. 

Then follow sentient vitalities, with nerve-system, and sense- 
organs, and digestive arrangements, and circulatory prepara- 
tions, and loco-motive members, and permanent sex-distinctions 
through all generations. The one spontaneous nature works in 
and through all sentient organisms, maturing, and feeding, and 
assimilating the sustenance to the organism in all alike, and 
is truly the one individuality for all. This is known as Animal 
Organics. 

But the total individuality now attained in the one assimilated 
and assimilating organism, universally the same in every part, 
is wholly incompatible with further generic propagation. This 
one hfe assimilation throughout, now attained, is inadequate to 
advanced propagation. The physical internality has entirely 
gone over into the external, and the universal is incompetent 
to use nature's spontaneities any further, or go out in sex-dis- 
tinction and progressive generation any longer. The universal 
organism is one totality, and as organic individuality it has noth- 



246 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

ing more to do or to know. The organic individuality must 
die out, particular and universal, and let the emancipated spon- 
taneous soul come into full and free operation, and with this 
change we go out of the Philosophy of Nature, and enter on a 
new experience in the exposition and evolution of a new phi- 
losophic process, which gives us The Philosophy of Mind. 

How all organic individuality dies out from all thought, is 
exposed in the process of the emergence of the sentient soul 
from bodily organism into conscious activity and ultimately 
attained rationality : and this process is detailed under the 
division of — 

The Subjective Mind. The spontaneous agency which has 
done all the work in the evolution of Nature, has itself been 
nature, and has, in gravity, light, polarity, chemism, and life, 
acted quite unconsciously and as if in deep sleep, but now 
gradually wakes into consciousness, and comes to know itself 
and the nature that has prompted its activity. It is, as universal 
agent in nature, competent to negate that its distinctions of race 
in common experience, and those of natural temperament in 
several classes, and those of peculiar idiosyncracies in particular 
cases, were of its own origination, and then to affirm that the 
dreams, hallucinations, somnambulism, mesmerism, attending 
genius as mentor and adviser in emergencies, were properly 
acts of his soul which is distinct from, while yet in and by 
means of his bodily organism ; and then finally to come to the 
recognition that his organism, though his own, was yet other 
and aside from his soul, and that as a man, his body was instru- 
mental, and all his sense-organs were auxiliary to -his soul. 
This is known as Anthropology. 

And then come the revealings that the appearances in the 
use of the special senses were his subjective procuring though 
taken through the bodily organism ; and that the appetency to 
sense was distinct from the urgency to think in the understand- 
ing ; and that appetite often conflicted with the teachings of 



AN OPEN DOOR FOR PHILOSOPHY. 24/ 

subsequent experience, till he learned to put his sense-soul, for 
its own best interest, subsidiary and auxiliary to the general 
thought of Ivumanity. He thus came to make a permanent 
alliance of his sentient soul for its own good, with the general 
thinking-process of the universal ; and in this alliance the par- 
ticular sense- soul becomes oblivious of its own organism, and 
cheerfully agrees to get its own gratification only in subordina- 
tion to the claim of the universal, in which permanent surrender 
and covenant the soul not only left its dead organism, but lost 
its particular appetites in the better thought of the universal. 
Such annulment of particular appetite in the universal dictate is 
reason ; and the process to it is known as Phenomenology. 

Such reason is now true Mind, and it may study itself and 
learn and adopt its highest teachings. Its own normal activi- 
ties attained in their order is theoretic science ; its regard for 
appetitive gratification controlled by the higher craving of uni- 
versal Intelligence, is practical science ; and its adoption of the 
rule of highest Happiness in the highest Intelligence, is free 
science in both theory and practice. This gives us what is 
known as Psychology, 

Henceforth the body is disregarded ; the sentient soul has 
lost its individuality in the universal Intellect, and this intrinsic 
correspondence of particular with universal beneficence is now 
the actuality in a much further develoi)ment and higher exist- 
ence than was the logical actuality with which we began the 
development of Nature. This is now known as Objective Mind, 
and is competent to go out in the external world of human 
experience, and reveal itself in its further philosophical devel- 
opment. 

The Objective Mind. We need steadily to keep in view 
that the end sought in this philosophy is the capability to put 
the classified experience into a completed system, and that it 
is attempting to accomplish this by the activity of purely spon- 
taneous thinking. It has attained and then discarded organic 



248 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

individualit}', and has now the combination of the spontaneous 
soul of nature and the universal thinking process in one actu- 
aUty, as reason or Objective Mind. 

This universal reason has its numberless particulars which, 
while not individual, are still separate parts in the totahty of 
Mind, and each is participant in the total free will and per- 
sonality precisely proportional to the quantity it has of the 
essential pure spontaneity of all. Each is complemental to the 
whole beside itself, and in every separate case the particular is 
the necessary co-efficient in the constitution of a full concep- 
tion. The combination of the sense-soul and the general 
thought-process is the free personality which can act legiti- 
mately only in correspondence each with the other as the 
alternate party in the alliance. The appetitive in the particular 
personality may prompt the spontaneity to action, but the 
dictate of the thought-appreciation must decide the result, and 
the highest ultimate good must be the satisfied craving to reach 
the end of clear cognition ; and in this is the main-spring of the 
entire philosophy. 

In coming to the recognition of human Rights, we have the 
following process. To put the will upon an Object is to 
enstamp personality upon it, and so far to appropriate it as to 
constitute the claim to it as property ; and in this is opened a 
way for contract with another party, and an arrangement of 
rights between the parties is a tj-eaty. Conflicting claims 
between parties must bring them to an accredited umpire, 
whose decision determines the right and wrong; and the per- 
sonal intention as for or against is the origination of good or 
evil ; and in this is the source of Morality. The rule of morals 
rests in the determination of what is the largest attainable 
amount of the common reason, and which will constitute the 
bond of unity in the given community. 

In the Family, this will be found in natural affection and 
mutual confidence, under parental administration leading to 



AN OPEN DOOR FOR PHILOSOPHY. 249 

patriarchal gOYenw-nQni. In Civil SocietYj the tie of common 
wants and interests constitutes a perpetual interdependence, 
which induces division of labor, distinct classes of laborers, 
•and ultimately different grades of persons, making it necessary 
to introduce municipal arrangements. Then, the State is a 
separate totality of persons in civil communities, all held in the 
bond of particular participation in the total reason of the nation. 
This will originate Constitutional Law, putting the supreme 
authority in a representative of the total reason, leading to 
Monarchical Government, and loyal subjection to the Monarch 
and his constitutional authorities. Subsequently will arise In- 
ternational Law, holding the many separate states in the bonds 
of acknowledged comity, custom, and cherished precedents, 
and estabHshed treaties. 

Putting these together will bring out the spirit of each state 
in its history, and finally that of all nations in a Universal 
History, in which will be found the Mind of all ages as the 
spirit of universal humanity. In such history the Objective 
Mind has found its full development, and then passes lastly 
into — 

Absolute Mind. This is Mind in complete totality and 
absolute reality, manifesting itself in the now fully attained cog- 
nition of itself and of all in itself; as Art, in which the essential 
absolute Mind is signified in the historic forms best taken on 
by the Subjective Mind, known as the foi-m of the Beantiful : 
First, in finest human form and features as Classic Art ; Sec- 
ondly, in the fancied or imaginary forms in which the spirit and 
genius of a people were represented in a sublimer style than in 
any particular personality, inducing the distinctive polytheistic 
figures and images of different nations, as Syjnbolic Art; 
Thirdly, where the peculiar genius of the artist shows the 
absolute as condescendingly consenting to the humiliation of 
any particular form, and which is termed Romantic Art. From 
this manifestation of the absolute as humiliated by any attempted 



250 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

mode of formal exposition we are brought to the truth higher 
than art, that of revealed Religion. The absolute Mind itself 
has being only as it reveals itself to mind. The absolute is but 
the totality of its particulars, and is wholly exhausted in its 
distributed reason through all particular personalities. Each 
exists in the total, and the total exists in its particulars. The 
totality is the paternal Creator begetting the eternally mediating 
Particulars, and thus as both Father and Son perpetually abiding 
therein as Eternal Spirit. This mode of exhibition is the com- 
plementary conception of thought, not at all a revealed observa- 
tion for the senses ; it is a matter oi faith for the understanding, 
not of realized perception through any organism, and so admit- 
tedly it can have no scientific experiment. The unity of the 
Father, Son, and Spirit is solely in Philosophy. In this alone 
can it be cognized that the universal is one in all its particulars, 
and all particulars are one in the universal, and in this conclu- 
sion this philosophy stops short. 

We have in our sketch given a comparatively short but fair 
epitome of a long process ; and though its fallacies are at its 
very commencement, it has been necessary to compass the 
whole in order to an assurance of its hopeless insufficiency. 
We weary in the long pursuit, and are in danger on this account 
of a delusive confusion from the complication ; but if we clearly 
recognize the incipient fallacy, it will be no difficult task to hold 
it in the light through all the journey, and thus know where we 
are at the end. The philosophy eats its cake at the beginning, 
and yet assumes to have it all the same to the end. Its 
thought-process is made up wholly within the understanding, 
and its reason is the product of a compromise between the 
sense and the understanding, and does not propose to itself any 
work that must take it beyond the common experience. We 
may therefore be sure that there is no portion of it too profound 
for a sharp Empirical Psychologist to scrutinize thoroughly ; all 
that is needed is to put every questionable part to the fair test 



AN OPEN DOOR FOR PHILOSOPHY. 25 1 

of accurate experiment. No abstraction it may make can have 
any validity, if attempted to be used beyond the reach of actual 
experiment. 

The very first position is in a thought-process abstracted 
from a hving thinker. It calls it a living thought-process ; but a 
living thought-process without a living thinker is an impossible 
conception. Pure spontaneity we have already tested never 
lives in an actual process except in a given condition, and the 
process is a result of the originating spontaneous activity which 
itself must be conditioned in order to the process. The imagi- 
nation would be logically lawless that should attempt to put 
causal spontaneity into an abstract process. No possible ex- 
periment can be brought to test such a presumption. The 
next step is the assumption that pure abstract being is equal to 
nothing, and that all properties from which the pure being has 
been abstracted are not-being, and are nought ; but the process 
in the face of the abstract being begins to move in logical 
affii-mation, negation, and re-affirmation, and completing the 
circuit, has quality per se. The process, the being, and the 
non-being, as also the isolate quality, all are pure abstractions, 
for which there can be no predicates. And yet the next step 
assumes that this abstract quality has its nature to pass its limit, 
and spontaneously go into the beyond for others, and also those 
others in the beyond tend towards it, and such reciprocal 
tendencies in the abstract qualities to invade each the other is 
gravity, working not one upon the other as in common experi- 
ence, but self-repulsively each from its own intrinsic spontaneity. 
In this self-repulsive spontaneity is the causal agency which 
determines the entire forthcoming logic. All this is gratuitous 
assumption, and can find no possible empirical testing for it. 
And when the philosophy works out in the development of 
nature into externality, this gravity, supplemented by light, 
polarity, physical and organic chemistry, and sentient assimila- 
tion, successively and spontaneously works up all experience 



252 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

into total individuality. No scientific experiments in nature 
can find such causal spontaneities ; and yet, in the discarding 
of the organic individuality, these physical spontaneities come 
out as the soul of nature, and emerge from bodily form into 
conscious perception, appetition, and finally are received in 
permanent coalition with the original thought- pro cess, and thus 
constitute the Reason, or free Mind of the universe, which at 
last as absolute Mind passes through art and religion into self- 
knowing and all-knowing Philosophy. Such an arbitrary ab- 
straction and transformation from veritable experience can by 
no means prove itself to have brought that experience into 
systematic unity. 

The Aristotelian logic attained pure abstractions of objective 
conceptions, convenient for use in general judgments and syl- 
logistic conclusions, and while the conceptions were immova- 
ble and changeless, the, spontaneity of the understanding could 
turn the pure conceptions from side to side, and thus illusively 
act the part of substantial and causal connections within the 
changeless conceptions ; and then the philosophy took the 
abstractions as potential for all forms, standing for us thus as 
material cause, and as open to all forms, standing for us thus as 
moving cause. 

And just so on the other side, the Hegelian logic attains pure 
abstractions of thinking spontaneities, and annihilating the 
objective conceptions puts subjective spontaneities as a nature 
within their places, and works out its judgments and their rela- 
tions ; and then the philosophy takes these physical sponta- 
neities and makes a total individuality of nature. Then, dis- 
carding the individuality, the abstract spontaneity is made 
soul of nature, and concrete with the pure thinking- process it 
becomes reason, or objective Mind, which is competent to redu- 
plicate itself by using, at pleasure, either its sentient or its think- 
ing side. Aristotle puts his matter into mind and the mind 
works it into nature. Hegel puts spontaneity into matter and 



AN OPEN DOOR FOR PHILOSOPHY. 253 

makes nature out of it, and then its soul is put into the pure 
thinking, and the particularity and universahty together become 
absolute, the philosophy cognizing itself and all things as within 
itself. The real is discarded, the ideal is pursued, but all in 
such a mode that its ideal is as unimaginable as its discarded 
real. It might seem quite reverential for a Hegelian to use 
Kepler's words : " I think thy thoughts after thee, O God," 
while he is intently studying the universe ; and yet the seeming 
reverence becomes arrogance rather, if the true meaning of the 
philosopher is, that there is neither a God nor a Universe to be 
" thought " except as I think them. 

All that can be done, by a logic taking one side of experience 
only and disregarding the other side, has been effected in these 
two systems respectively, each on its own side ; but while they 
may give the forms which the facts must take on respectively, 
they cannot determine the facts. The logic must be tested 
by the facts, in both cases, and not the facts by the logic in 
either. So far, it may be well that the logic of both has been 
constructed. But the philosophy of each is alike empty and 
nsufficient. They both not only leave out each its opposite 
half of experience, but neither can carry its own at all beyond 
experience. For all purposes of uniting the fact of experience 
in a consistent system, they are worthless, and yet this very 
service is all for which any philosophy is needed. 

3. The Kantian Philosophy. — Kant was before Hegel, and 
many who have followed Hegel's philosophy to the end and 
found its insufficiency, are returning to Kant, either expecting to 
rest in or improve upon his system. This makes it expedient 
to say, in short, what are its defects in reference to its compe- 
tency to complete a general empirical science. 

Kant's controlling design was, to see if he could not succeed 
better in the interpretation of cognitions, by taking the subjec- 
tive spontaneity as his regulative principle, than had been done 
by the till then ordinary metliod of taking the objective inva- 



254 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

sion of the senses, as principal guide. With this end in view, 
Kant found that the human mind had cognitions of a priori 
truth in Space as precedent to place, and Time as precedent to 
period, in the truths of pure mathematics, and also in those of 
pure physics, and that thus there was consciously" in human 
experience a knowledge of what went beyond and outside of 
experience, and were truths of pure reason only. Could we 
not, then, by the help of such a prioji truth, connect facts of 
experience into judgments which would reach quite over beyond 
experience? This he assayed to do, and the outcome of this 
attempt is the Kantian philosophy. These a priori truths of 
space and time were immediate in the sense, and known as 
pitre intuitions, while those of geometrical constructions and 
physical connection were already to be found in the understand- 
ing, and were known as primitive conceptiojts.' Whether intui- 
tions or conceptions, they were alike ///r<? fo7^ms given in and 
with the sense and understanding respectively, and must remain 
empty except as filled by actual experience through the senses, 
and then by logical judgments in the understanding. When 
thus filled, the pure and primitive forms became empirical real- 
ities in the perception and the judgment. There must thus 
be a permanent noutnenon, or " thing in itself," persistently 
abiding out beyond experience, ever ready to be brought within 
experience, or all sense-observations must be in vain and all 
thought must be empty. And yet no faculty of perception or 
judgment could go back of the senses to attain any sort of cog- 
nition of this nounienon whatever. 

Here Fichte and Hegel parted from Kant, saying, quite 
logically : Our proper end is cognition, the knowing of what 
knowledge is, and certainly this assumed necessity for the 
nouinenon which cannot be known, in order that by it we may 
know, is absurdity not to be tolerated. The aged Kant still 
insisted, and the younger disciples deserted ; hence the philoso- 
phy of the spontaneous, which Kant began with the noumenon, 



AN OPEN DOOR FOR PHILOSOPHY. 255 

was carried out, as we have already given, with an entire rejec- 
tion of the thing in itself outside of the sense-experience. 

This persistent ''thing in itself," back of all phenomena, 
adopted by Kant, doubtless kept him back from a philosophy 
resting on the attainment and use of a combined physical soul 
and thinking activity, as a spontaneous reason known as objec- 
tive Mind; and the rejection of it did, with as little doubt, push 
Hegel to the endless process of such an unimaginable mode of 
thinking; but in the ultimate conviction of its insufficiency 
which must come, and the turning back to the stand-point 
which Kant would not desert, the unsatisfied Hegelian is in a 
better philosophic state for a correct appreciation of the Kant- 
ian result than the author himself. Seeing in Kant's work what 
the understanding can do by the help of the retained noume- 
non, and that nevertheless the ends of philosophy were yet as 
far beyond reach as ever, the disappointed Hegelian, still thor- 
oughly disappointed in Kant, will be the more surely driven to 
the true point of inquiry now arising, and will ask : What may 
be done, or rather what must be done with this "thing in itself," 
which is now found indispensable, but has thus far been una- 
vailable for the consummation of our purpose ? 

By his a priori space and time, and the spontaneous activity 
of the primitive apperception, "I think," Kant could construct 
all pure intuitions, and connect all pure conceptions in synthetic 
Judgments, and thereby attain a pure schematism of the entire 
human understanding, and then could assume the "thing in 
itself" to be adequate to fill the empty forms, thus giving sub- 
stance and efficiency to his philosophic schematizing. But how 
this noumenon outside all experience could fill all empty forms 
in exacjt correspondence with experience, the "I think" was 
utterly incompetent to expound or even imagine. This would 
be a work impossible to a faculty shut up hopelessly within 
experience. And beside, there is the a priori sphere itself, the 
absolute space and time, and the noumenon, which involves the 



256 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

cognitions of Spirit, Immortality, and Deity, the convictions for 
which are perpetually cropping out in experience, while, for all 
this sphere beyond "the thing in itself," there is no fioiimenal 
mode for conceiving and much less for intuitively beholding. 
In short, the Kantian philosophy can tell us nothing about 
superphenomenal substances and causes, and nothing about 
the thinking soul, its immortality, or its God, and thus can 
never schematise any forms for them, or if they obtrude their 
semblances in imagination, it must be utterly beyond its capa- 
bility to give any reality to them. The pure reason puts up in 
consciousness the conviction of these a priori truths, and then 
the philosophy sets the thinking activity of the understanding, 
merely, to cognize them, and the attempt terminates in the fully 
exposed antinomies where at length Kantianism sticks fast. 

In practical Morality, also, the pure Reason gives the a pj'i- 
ori truths of freedom and obligation, as in physics it had given 
a p7'iori ?>Y>2iCQ and time and the "thing in itself," and the use 
of the a priori liberty and the ought avails to fill out all the 
pure forms of an immutable and universal system of morals. 
But just as it had been in the philosophy of nature, so is it here 
in the philosophy of Morality. The perpetual use of the a 
priori freedom, and the knowledge of what it essentially is, is 
left as inexplicable as the a priori space and time and the nou- 
menon. Back of all moral experience is "the categorical Im- 
perative," and the freedom of the human mind, with no other 
explanation of what and whence they are than that they are a 
priori given in pure reason ; they are then taken in the under- 
standing, and all the conceptions of freedom and duty and 
responsibility are determined only by the analogies and deduc- 
tions of abstract logic. The dignity of the man is in his intelli- 
gence, and his liberty is in his capacity to think and judge 
soundly, and then to adopt and follow the last dictates of the 
logical understanding. A priori truth can get no exposition 
till it has passed through the logical process and come out in 



AN OPEN DOOR FOR PHILOSOPHY. 25/ 

logical form, as the filling in of what else had been empty. 
Thus when we would logically establish our moral freedom, we 
bring up in an Antinomy as remediless as those before found at 
the terminus of Material Philosophy. 

When Kant's pure Reason had given to him its a priori 
truth, instead of turning over those truths to the use of the 
understanding only, there needed a clearer psychological test 
of the faculty of reason, and its insight through and beyond the 
provinces of sense and thought, and its right, in its own author- 
ity to induce the truths of substance and cause, and space and 
time, and freedom and duty. It was needed then to work out 
all the philosophy in the light of this tested reason, and to see 
that its problems could not possibly be solved by any faculty 
that must keep its whole work restricted to and wholly shut in 
by experience. If our philosophy take in only the physical 
facts of experience, we must still find an adequate cause and 
sufficient reason for them in order that they should thus have 
been ; and still more if it take in the vital, mental, spiritual facts 
in experience, it must acknowledge a rational spiritual faculty 
which may recognize and expound its own facts, and hold all 
physical facts within the comprehension of a spiritual intelli- 
gence. The Kantian philosophy, both on its physical and its 
ethical side, is valuable for its introduction and defence of the 
a priori truths of pure reason, but it well nigh cancels all its 
value in taking up these a priori truths, when the author gives 
them over to the lower faculties of sense and logical thought, 
neither of which can do other than to distort and debase them. 

4. TJie Philosophy of Natural Evolution. — This is another 
attempt to attain a philosophy which shall complete an empir- 
ical science. It runs in this way : Experience begins with the 
fact of co-resistance, which comes into consciousness through 
the contact of an impress upon the sense, as in touch, with a 
repress from the sense. That which thus begins with simple 
co-resistances, goes forward by putting these in composition, 



258 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

the simples becoming complex and more compact and clearly 
limited as the process goes on. This process is known as 
Ezwlutioii, and is defined as " a change f?'07?i an indefinite 
incoherent homogeneity, to a definite coherent heterogeneity.'^ 
This definition, though it must not be permitted to assume 
that such a change firom the homogeneous to the heteroge- 
neous ever occurs, except when tested by accurate experiment, 
may be said to give the ^' law of evolution," meaning by law 
an invariable /^^/ of order scientifically tried over. 

In assigning a cattse for evolution, this philosophy finds itself 
in a logical dilemma. The fact of uniform order in experience 
is itself the law and only cause for evolution, and as the philos- 
ophy inevitably restricts human knowledge within experience, 
it is not possible to go outside and find some original law-giver 
or prime efficiency beyond experience. But when we make 
evolution begin with a fact already given in experience, how 
can we know anything about that beginning? We cannot find 
in this first fact either the law or cause for the successions 
which may be, since their order is not yet a fact, and we cannot 
begin to think about development, or to know any thing about 
it, until it has passed into actual fact. We cannot think in the 
absence of all cause, and as we cannot know any cause for our 
first fact, we cannot begin our thinking. The escape from this 
dilemma is sought by saying that there must be an unconditional 
cause, and since we must have it, though we can know nothing 
of it, we may logically take it as though it was given, and yet, 
as all our knowledge is relative, we will use this absolute cause 
only as a relative, just as we should have done if we could have 
actually made it a relative by bringing it within our experience. 
For all practical purposes it shall be a conditional cause. 

But this introduction of an absolute cause, which we are going 
to use as a relative cause, only helps us out of one trouble by 
plunging us in another. Or rather it puts the trouble a step 
farther off, where we may not see it so clearly, but where it 



AN OPEN DOOR FOR PHILOSOPHY. 259 

remains unchanged, and where " persistent " thought, if it be 
also profound, must surely find it. This will appear if we 
closely note what the philosophy makes this unconditional 
cause to be, and what it attempts to do with it. The co-resist- 
ance which gives the content in consciousness, is the product 
of both an outside impress and the organic repress, and we can 
have no consciousness except in the action and reaction of 
these two. Which then of these shall we take for the uncon- 
ditional causality? The philosophy, doubtless preposterously, 
takes the objective impress, and finds in the invading activity 
the efficient and regulating cause. The outer material is thus 
made the cause of the whole process of evolution. Every 
point of co-resistance which stands as content in consciousness 
is the constituent matter of our experience, and is both the 
substance and cause which is here to have its philosophical 
evolution. Let us see how this works. 

If we abstract the points of co-resistances, there is left for us 
the places they have filled, and these are abstract space ; and 
if we abstract these points one after another, we have their 
successive periods remaining, from which we have abstract time ; 
thus both Space and Time are known as determined by co-resist- 
ing force. So also if we make an analysis of Matter, we run 
the conception up in the last resort to the co-resistances, and 
find matter to be constituted atjj mis tic ally, the atoms being col- 
laterally in contact, but each excluding the others at its surface, 
and thus all matter being ultimately impenetrable force. And 
lastly, if we closely analyze Motion we find it to involve material 
force passing into different places in successive periods, and 
thus to be the most complicated of all conceptions, embracing 
matter, space, and time, but all at last resting on force. All the 
elementary constituents of experience thus are found to rest ulti- 
mately on co-resistances or forces. The first content in con- 
sciousness is thus relative force, but .as a " relative " cannot 
possibly be a " first," v/e are obliged to assume an absolute 



260 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

force, though we cannot think it, as the prime cause of all rela- 
tive forces. We cannot think absolute force, for we can only 
think relatively ; but as we cannot get along at all in our think- 
ing without such force, we will take it as in itself the same yes- 
terday, to-day, and forever, though using it, as we necessarily 
must, as if it were a relative, and as if experience itself ran back 
beyond all our conception of it. It runs through all the changes 
and varieties of experience, but is itself persistent and equiva- 
lent, through the past, in the present, and for the future. 

But what a jugglery is here, however adroitly played ! The 
absolute force, though openly introduced at the outset, is at 
once covertly removed, and we have nothing but relatives after 
all. We have set it up in order to start our thinking, and have 
set it aside, as our logic compels us to do, the moment we begin 
to carry out our thought. This absolute, which we are using 
only as a relative, becomes really a relative the moment it is 
closely scrutinized. Though called "absolute," and "persis- 
tent," it is material and mechanical only. Its matter is intrinsi- 
cally co-resistance, and thus subject to all the natural conditions 
and relations of antagonistic action and reaction. It may have 
excess of energy on one side and thus move, but it must 
either push or pull according to the invariable order of experi- 
ence. It may be indefinitely analyzed, but its minutest atom is 
a place filled, and has an impenetrable surface. There may be 
perpetual conversions, but it must be in the composition and 
decomposition of these independent and impenetrable atomic 
bodies, which admit of continual re-arrangement, but not of 
the dissolution of the co-resistance. There may be larger or 
smaller rhythmic oscillation, but only in conformity with empiri- 
cal equilibration. There may be the gaining of facilities in 
channels of removed hinderances, but only in the transfer of the 
hinderances to other positions. There may also be passages 
from one genus to another, but it must find its example in actual 
experience, and if contradictory to experience, the first case 



AN OPEN DOOR FOR PHILOSOPHY. 26 1 

is a miracle breaking in upon uniform law. There can be no 
increase of forces in experience but as derived from the uncon- 
ditioned persistent force, and at just so much exhaustion of the 
absolute. Evolution is no augmentation, but a transfer of forces 
from the unconditioned, which must somehow be balanced 
across the chasm between pre-experience and passing experi- 
ence. To expect to attain any help to our thinking by using 
the unconditioned as a relative is thus an ultimate absurdity. 
But the effort to attain it so elaborately put forth, is a profound 
though unwitting testimony to the truth of the higher faculty of 
the reason. The understanding does not overleap itself and 
seek absolute truth. If we had no rational faculty we should 
have no aspiration for unconditioned causes in any way. 

And now here the remark is quite obvious, that we must as 
unavoidably assume an adequate unconditional cause for the 
more important and prominent facts in the aesthetic, ethic, 
and religious experience of man as for those in his physical 
experience. If we assume only a persistent force adequate for 
thinking physical facts, we shall, of course, neglect the whole 
spontaneous and rational side of our experience, and get a 
philosophy partial, insufficient, and misleading. Natural Evo- 
lution, however, does assume only a persistent force that is 
material and mechanical, and thus we may foresee that it must 
leave all human spontaneity, rationality, and liberty utterly 
unthinkable by it. It will shut itself up in the physical portion 
of experience, and be blind to all mental and moral facts which 
it cannot derive from material sources. 

Taking this persistent force with all its relative gravities, 
polarities, chemical equivalents, and affinities, this material evolu-. 
tion may construct a universal system of Nature hypothetically, 
which shall have much plausibility and ingenuity. Yet, so soon 
as it attempts a philosophical Biology out of material mechanics, 
and would make plant-life arise out of the mineral kingdom, 
and then the animal from the vegetable kingdom, and also 



262 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

evolve all species and genera in each kingdom, the higher from 
the lower, we are obliged by our allegiance to logical law and 
scientific authority to take the whole attempt sternly back to the 
test of scientific experiment, and force the philosophy to get its 
facts of equivocal generation from mineral matter, of sensation 
from plant-life, and of human science, morality, and religion 
from animal appetite or brute reproduction, without a miracle. 
The test is not at all in suggestive classification nor embryo 
logic gradation, but in an actual fact of transition. 

When the philosophy essays to accomplish this, it comes to 
a termination that is very much worse than a mere failure, as 
the following points will clearly show : — 

(i.) // runs into the hopelessly inconceivable. — The position 
is the obverse side of experience from that of the Hegelian 
philosophy : that took the spontaneous, and left out the me- 
chanical ; this takes the mechanism of matter, and shuts off all 
spontaneity. We have seen the former to be throughout caus- 
ality without substance, and shall see this to be superficial 
substance with no causal changes. Each is equally fatuous; 
but while the fiirst must go and yet get nothing, the second 
must perpetually stay at the surface and possess nothing be- 
neath it. The one we have seen to be impossible to a logical 
imagination ; we now show the other to be an impossible logical 
conception as a working agency. 

The unconditional abiding Force is out of consciousness and 
beyond experience, but is yet assumed to be available for use 
in conscious experience, as a relative, and thus, though uncon- 
ditioned, just as valid within consciousness as if really a relative 
content of consciousness. We will use it in this fashion and 
see what can be cognized by it. We suppose a material atom 
held at rest by balanced co-resistance, and thus must it ever 
remain if left to its own resources. We again suppose an 
excess of force to be given from the persistent unconditioned 
force which shall yet act as a relative force upon one side of 



AN OPEN DOOR FOR PHILOSOPHY. 26^ 

the co-resistance standing in isolation ; the atom then must 
move in and with the unbalanced co-resistance direct, equably, 
and interminably, if left still to its own resources. But whether 
resting in the balance or floating in the flow, what is there 
reaching that non-spontaneous atom, which can tend to awaken 
conscious thought within it? And still more, how can we tell 
from whence the excess of the superadded force had come ? 
Suppose the resting atom to be struck by, or as moving atom 
to itself strike in contact with, another atom : what, in the im- 
penetrabihty of both, could tend to awaken conscious thought 
in either, if both were destitute of spontaneity? The surfaces 
in contact entirely excluded each other, and neither had any 
intercommunion. If one be spontaneously receptive, it may 
take the other in its grasp, define and distinguish it, and thus 
become conscious of it, otherwise the object may as well 
acknowledge the subject. If both reciprocate in correspon- 
dence, like two living hands spontaneously ingrasping, each 
will be alternately subject and object in mutual recognition ; but 
then, even, it must be only as spontaneous subject and not as 
object destitute of spontaneity that each is in the other's con- 
sciousness. Where both are but mechanical, material, they each 
expel the other from any communion. The rigid rule of the 
excluded middle sunders them at contradictories. No uncon- 
ditioned force, however persistent, can be conceived as coming 
within the field and working in thought with the understanding, 
except as by action and reaction ; complemental co-agency is 
of necessity purely in spontaneity. 

This difficulty is sought to be evaded by multiplying the 
intervening periods to such a minimum of time as thereby to 
lose all consciousness of making a leap or leaving a gap in the 
evolution, but not until pure time shall be conceived to get 
somewhat from nothing can this illusion mislead the logical 
understanding. The plane the least inclined from the exactly 
horizontal position can be conceived to send the persistent 



264 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

force, unconditioned or relative, no whither than in the inclined 
direction. And just here also is the hidden delusion of all the 
plausibility given to the argument of the so-called ^^ natural 
selection^ We never say of the dynamic excess, which has 
raised the mountain ranges and then left their statically bal- 
anced sides to buffet with the storms, that "natural selection" 
has been here evolving the planet's dimensions. It is when 
some adventitious force has elevated a spontaneous individual 
to higher excellency than his fellows, and thus made him mure 
competent than they to fight the battle for life, that it is said, 
"natural selection" comes in and anew species is evolved in 
him and his posterity after his like. The myriad years in the 
geologic eras, it is also said, give abundant time for this "natu- 
ral selection" to have brought up thus all living species, and all 
the lost species and rising genera that have dropped out of fossil 
preservation, so that probably there has been no chasm in the 
evolution from the protozoa to the highest mammalian. But 
what has natural evolution to do with spontaneities ? Its per- 
sistent unconditioned Force is material mechanism only, and 
this gives no capability to think the development of spontaneous 
individualities. If there is spontaneity outside the common 
consciousness, then miracles are no mysteries, and a created 
experience is a thing in course. Now this at once induces 
another fallacy of this philosophy : 

(ii.) That it is in perpetual violation of the most stringent 
rides of Empirical Science. — Nothing, it says, can be known 
beyond relatives. To think is to distinguish ; and, with nothing 
but primitive impenetrable atoms, all thinking must, from the 
necessity of the case, be that of integration and differentiation 
only. Composition and decomposition, and thus perpetual 
conversions in rearrangements, make up the whole logic of 
material evolution. There can be no perfect combinations, and 
only collocations, or, as they are termed, "agglutinations," can 
occur. The selfsame primitive atoms last forever. 



AN OPEN DOOR FOR PHILOSOPHY. 265 

These are primitive principles in the philosophy of natural 
evolution, and yet that which is stated as matter of fact in its 
own definition, that the homogeneous changes to the heteroge- 
neous, is quite in violation of them. No test of scientific 
experiment has as yet been found where one and the same kind 
passes into another kind. Even in physical experience, as with 
gravity, heat, polarity, binary chemistry, etc., no actually observed 
fact of any one of these distinguishable forces going over and 
passing by direct conversion into another has been verified. 
By its own admission we cannot think of a first relative force 
except as an unconditioned persistent force precede it ; and 
as we must think in order to cognition, we must unavoidably 
postulate such a persistent force, even if we use it only as a 
relative. Both of these alleged requisites for thinking are in 
violation of our affirmed restriction within experience. We go 
out to get our unconditioned, and then we assume it to become 
a relative, and use it as such in experience, since we cannot 
otherwise think. But will even unavoidable thinking in viola- 
tion of logical rule secure valid cognitions? Thus in physical 
facts, natural evolution transgresses its own rules. 

And yet more widely unscientific is its practice as it passes 
from physics into Biology. Life, it says, is evolved direct from 
matter by chemical and magnetic forces, and yet no accurate 
scientific experiment has passed from mechanical matter to 
vital organism by any process of equivocal generation. And so 
all the regulated gradations of living organisms, vegetable and 
animal, through ascending specific and generic series, are taken 
as indicative of natural evolution, and the origin of species is 
supposed to have been induced by sex and natural selection, 
even though with the most earnest research no experiment has 
been found sufficiently exact to distinguish variety of race from 
pecuharity of species, and find an unequivocal example of the 
natural conversion of one species into another. So far as yet 
appears scientifically, such a case once occurring would be as 
truly a breach of natural law as an original creation. 



266 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

And so, still further, Biology is deemed to have been evolved 
into Psychology and Sociology and Morality, by the trans- 
mitted descent of atomic re-arrangements and ancestral conver- 
sions of forces, propagated and perpetuated through unnumbered 
generations. But scientific experiment has never tested such 
transmission, nor verified such propagation through any section 
of the growing experience. All past experience is exactly the 
other way. Intellectual, moral, and religious education and 
instruction have preceded the elevation, and when neglected, 
barbarism has followed. Social melioration has never been the 
product of natural evolution. 

We thus see that this philosophy attempts the inconceivable, 
and goes beyond the test of scientific experiment, and now we 
say of the philosopher : — 

(iii.) Give to him what he asks, and make him take it, and 
he will shut out and co7itradict all common experience. — He 
asks us to let him have the co-resistance given in the sense-con- 
tact to be altogether mechanical force, action upon the sense, 
and re-action by the sense, and thus the matter in the field 
of consciousness to be in the last analysis so many points of 
impenetrable atoms, which we cognize just as the mechanical 
force impresses them. Give and make him take this, and then 
all cognition in sense-experience ends with the mechanical 
impression, and there is no spontaneity on the organic side 
attending and distinguishing and uniting subject and object. 
The mechanism alone knows. But he cannot carry the com- 
mon experience with him. All common conviction is, that while 
the outer impresses the sense, yet it is the inner activity which 
does the knowing, and that this is wholly mental and not at all 
material. 

And again, the philosopher asks that he may have his chem- 
ical elements to be material, taking those most fit for his pur- 
pose, in stability of some and volatility of others beyond all other 
matter, and thus that the chemistry which builds up the nerve- 



AN OPEN DOOR FOR PHILOSOPHY. 26/ 

organism be taken as mechanical only. This continually adjusts 
inner relations to outer environment, and makes waste and 
supplies it by matter from matter, and reproduces its kind by 
sexual generation in natural selection, just as one material 
machine previously adjusted might make another like the an- 
cestor, and in this way life is evolved from matter; then by 
happy incidents some new machines come up more excellent 
than common, and work out the weaker, so that in the long 
ages the mechanism grows better and begets a better progeny. 
Grant all this, but make it clear and hold the philosopher to it, 
and it will so contradict all common sense, that only such 
machine-born minds as his own will follow him. 

And yet further, he asks that these highest specimens of 
mechanical descent be admitted to have so worked out their 
nervous organism toward their nourishing environment, and by 
long use to have so opened and cleared their channels to an inner 
use and enjoyment, that at length all special organs have been 
evolved, and afferent and efferent nerves with their ganglionic 
and co-ordinating centres are completed, and now shocks from 
without are so modified in their motion through this machinery 
within, that like nicely arranged musical chords the lines vibrate 
in exact harmony, and the mechanism itself makes and hears 
and enjoys the modulated movements. So let the philosopher 
have his way, and yet force him to travel it in the full light that 
all is material machinery, begotten entirely from a mechanical 
ancestry, and that it works and perceives and thinks and is 
gratified only mechanically, and never spontaneously, and how- 
ever mistakenly admired the philosophy may be, most surely 
the common experience will contradict it and ever keep itself 
outside of it. 

And beyond all this, he asks that the Biologic experience 
through the nerve-mechanism be taken as the source from 
whence comes all our Psychology. These nerve-shocks from 
without, and their consequent modulations, have their results in 



268 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

the machinery, and their expected repetitions are joyfully or 
reluctantly anticipated. Memory awakens ideal imaginings, 
and induces thoughtful estimates and judgments, and comes 
to rational conclusions and practical resolutions, and an execu- 
tive will shapes future conduct and habits ; and this forces the 
inquiry whether the choices of men are free or fixed with no 
alternative ; and the philosopher asks that this, his own stated 
decision, be allowed him as the true solution of the entire 
problem of freedom : " To reduce the general question to the 
simplest terms," he says, " Psychical changes either conform to 
law or they do not. If they do not conform to law, this work, 
in common with all works on the subject, is sheer nonsense ; 
no science of Psychology is possible. If they do conform to 
law, there cannot be any sucli thing as free-will." With him, 
the whole process of evolution goes into the executive will, and 
has come down in the biological nerve-system, through all 
physiological and psychological changes of the long past, in 
which mechanical descent it is taken to be impossible that there 
should have been a gap, or a leap, or an alteration. 

And now, it should be noted, that it depends altogether on 
the meaning of the " law " used, whether all that is said by any 
one on the subject of psychical changes is " sheer nonsense." 
What this philosophy means by law is clear enough. All 
changes, physical and psychical, are mechanical, pushed out or 
pulled in as their relations determine, whether from the persis- 
tent absolute or the variable relative ; and if we grant what is 
asked and the philosopher is held to it, he will be in direct 
contradiction to all common experience. He can neither take 
common minds with him, nor give any conclusive reason why 
he should not go to them, rather than they should come to 
him. They feel responsible to others for their treatment of 
them, and hold others in like responsibility towards themselves. 
They recognize rights and duties, and not merely appetite and 
gratification, and they know that if they trench on the rights of 



AN OPEN DOOR FOR PHILOSOPHY. 269 

the philosopher or refuse to pay him his dues, he has also the 
same feeUng, and will exact of them the like responsibiHties. 
They have the most ineradicable conviction that humanity as it 
is could not live in social communion for a day under the sway 
of submission to the strongest, when his superior force should 
be regulated only by his appetites ; nor can they possibly see, 
nor can he show them, how even appetites can get in and act 
upon mechanical force. Their law, whether they can expound 
it or not, is that of their inner mental spontaneity guided 
by outer conditions, and common experience can never be 
compassed and systematized by any possible arrangement of 
mechanical forces. The philosophy of natural evolution is not 
merely a failure, but is quite intolerable to a manly mind and 
ingenuous spirit. It insults all honest claim to self-respect, and 
is a mockery of all mental, moral, and religious aspiration. 
To avoid the charge of Materialism, it at last retreats to the 
assumption of an original movement back of any matter to be 
moved and of any mind to modify the motion. If Philosophy 
is truly love of wisdom, and if Science is the approbation of 
systematic integrity, neither Philosophy nor Science will ever 
satisfy itself by any attempted working of mechanical forces 
through "natural selections." 

We have now, adequately for our present designs, considered 
the main philosophical theories for bringing the classified facts 
of empirical science to an accurate and consistent system, and 
have found their particular defects and their insufficiency alto- 
gether to bring common experience into scientific unity. The 
theories we have noted may be taken as generally inclusive of 
the philosophy of all past ages for compassing empirical facts 
by- any modes of thinking in the logical understanding. With 
the exception of Kant's admission of a priori truths, they are 
all, Kant's not excepted, wrought out in the logic of the under- 
standing only ; and hence it has been quite within our power to 
review in a summary way their respective works, while keeping 



2/0 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

ourselves quite within the province of an Empirical Psycholog}^ 
Their whole compass of what may be called metaphysical 
research has been inside of experience, and just on this 
account it has been impracticable for them to comprehend 
experience, and thereby impossible that they should have found 
philosophical success. From the nature of the case, the faculty 
of the human understanding, which receives all its materials 
from sense-observation, must find it impracticable to overlook 
its own field of consciousness and tell what are the precedent 
conditions for the validity of its conclusions. It has, however, 
abundantly convinced us that a comj^leted science must put its 
dependence upon the help of a higher Faculty. 

Section III. : The Precise Attitude of Science at the 
Opening of a Sufficient Philosophy. Particular sciences have 
their respective facts, and the classification of these facts after 
methods somewhat diversified. It is expedient, however, for a 
general empirical science, which is to comprehend all experi- 
ence, that it attain a classification fixed and abiding, with its 
method determined after the order by which it has come to the 
cognition of the facts, and by their relations to each other as 
they stand in this intellectual process, and this can be found 
only as the result of an accurate Empirical Psychology. Our 
mode of testing the validity of the facts given in common expe- 
rience has been by subjecting the old experience to a new trial, 
in a similar case, by an accurate, and, if may be, better assisted 
observation. Such criterion is also ever open, not only to 
the teacher, but to both his pupils and his critics. There is, 
however, a very careful discrimination to be made in reference 
to the faculty by which the fact may be ascertained. Some 
facts are cognized by the senses, some by reflective thought, 
and therefore only in the inner consciousness, and still some 
otliers only by the insight of a higher faculty than either sense- 
perception or reflection in an internal consciousness ; and it 
must be delusive if the inferior faculty be put to the task of 



AN OPEN DOOR FOR PHILOSOPHY. 2/1 

testing facts which can be found only in a higher province. 
Life is beyond the perception of any sense, however instru- 
mentally assisted the sense may be ; and, also, the effort to get 
hold of nature's distinguishable forces by subjecting mechan- 
ical matter to chemical solvents is and must ever be illusive. 
We gain much in getting the phenomenal changes of matter 
through its compositions and decompositions, but the pure 
mathematical statics and dynamics which he under and hold 
on through all these transformations are cognizable only to the 
insight of reason. 

We have all along been very careful so to put our testing 
experiments as not to confound mechanics and spontaneity — 
physical, psychical, and rational facts — in the same category, 
and have thus been able, while getting at all the facts of expe- 
rience, to get them also distinctively in their classes. . We may 
give them as follows : — 

r 1. Mechanical relations. 
I. Physical Science. \ 2. Organic connections. 
1 3. Sentient affections. 
I . Re-collecting past perceptions. 
II. Psychical Science. <J 2. Logical conclusions. 
3. Scientific attestations. 
I . Esthetic Standard of Tasfe. 
III. Rational Science. \ 2. Philosophic Law of Truth. 



IV. Theistic Science. -{ 



3. Ethical Rule of Right. 

1 . God as a postulate of Reason. 

2. Divine azithority for human his- 
tory. 

'^3. Tripersonality in God's activity. 



These four distinctions of science are determined solely in 
their distinctive modes of attesting the validity of their facts, 
and in each case the respective sub-divisions have also their 
classification from their respective varieties of testing, and in 



2/2 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

all cases of the Divisions and Sub-divisions, the testing validity- 
rises in strength and comprehensiveness to the last, while only 
in the ultimate sub-division of Tripersonality can the systematic 
unity of human experience be attained and vindicated. In 
the first and second Divisions we have the testimony of expe- 
rience only, within which empirical science as such is limited ; 
in the third and fourth Divisions the validity stands on the 
unassailable demand and supply of a sufficient reason, the 
attempted gainsaying of which is a direct absurdity. We need 
only the most cursory examination of the process. 

In Physical Science the testing experiment rests solely upon 
the uniformity of experience in all the sub-divisions. In all 
material rest and motion there is the uniform relation of 
mechanical phenomena in the like cases and circumstances. 
The resting, or the moving at the same rate and in the same 
direction, is the same except as some interfering facts occur. 
So also in Organic connections ; experience is invariable that 
the organism is successor to a similar ancestor, and is followed 
by a similar progeny to itself, and that the growing changes in 
the individual pass in the like order for the same species, and 
in all sense-affections the like antecedents in the similar sense- 
organ induce the like consequents. This fact of uniform 
experience is also the law, without reference to any efficient, pre- 
cedent, or intermediate, determining the invariable succession. 

Psychical Science has a different mode of testing its peculiar 
facts, which, in all its sub-divisions, are determined by a spon- 
taneous activity consciously under the leading of its appropriate 
conditions. The re-collection of past perceptions has its con- 
scious spontaneous arrangement of the old facts together in 
their relative places and periods and interconnections, thereby 
presenting the old scene anew. And then, in logical conclu- 
sions, there is a spontaneous construction of the syllogism and 
deduction of the conclusion, all in conscious process according 
to given conditions. And finally, in scientifically attesting any 



AN OPEN DOOR FOR PHILOSOPHY, 2/3 

past'occurrence, there is the conscious spontaneous movement 
to the recapitulation and experimental verification of the old 
fact by the new experience. In all such cases, the test is 
primarily in the consciousness of the spontaneity and the 
leading solicitation of the proper condition. The activity is 
consciously of its own accord, while the condition, though 
concurrent, is from other sources. A machine may be so 
contrived as to move another on a given occasion, but the 
spontaneous agency, unlike the machine, not merely moves 
another, but first moves itself. But while the spontaneous 
agent is conscious of his own spontaneity, he is not conscious 
of another spontaneity ; and the only way to the conviction 
of a common spontaneity is through the uniformity of others' 
acts to his own exhibited in common experience, thus making 
a common experience the ultimate criterion. 

Here is the limit of psychical spontaneity acting alone. 
The understanding of itself can make no more than this of all 
that the senses have given over to it. Henceforth the light 
from a higher faculty must reveal to it and interpret for it the 
meaning of that which has all along been assumed as standing 
before it in order that its conditioned activity should have any 
signification. We have already added the faculty of reason to 
the intellect, as competent confidently to infer efficient causes 
through the facts which they have produced, and thus from 
what is to note what must have been ; and in the use of such 
faculty we have also added the ccsthetical, ethical, and theistic 
emotions and volitions to our Empirical Psychology, leaving 
them as yet inexplicable by any logical relations further than 
their uniform order as they are found in common experience. 
We can give no explanation of them except through the faculty 
attaining them, and this, in the failure of the understanding, is 
the precise point to which we have come. The help of reason 
can give to logical thought the competency to proceed further 
onward in the testing process toward completing the system 



274 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

of all common experience. This attestation of facts in the 
reason beyond that in psychical spontaneity is Philosophy, and 
we come now, as we could not have done before, to the open- 
ing way of philosophy with full confidence in the use of a 
sufficient faculty. We know we can meet every assailant of 
our testing experiment by the unavoidable conviction of self- 
absurdity. 

Section IV. : The Indices we are able to give towards 
A Philosophical Completion of General Empirical Science. 
We have yet the two classes of the Rational and Theistic 
sciences with their sub-divisions, to which the test of sufficient 
reason must be applied for full incontrovertible validity. A 
further reduction of these sub-divisions is unnecessary for our 
.purpose ; they embrace all particular rational sciences, and 
carry their criterion to the confirmation of any. The longest 
and most diligent life will find the field both broad and rich 
enough for it. This present work is an intended introduction 
to the whole field, with fair preparation to labor readily and 
profitably in any part of it. The Rational Psychology was 
designed to bridge the otherwise impassable chasm between 
empirical deduction from tested fact, and rational induction of 
efficient causes for the facts ; the safe suspension of tlie bridge 
being in the scientific test that the clear Idea in the Reason is 
ever the experimental Law in the Fact. We may go to or 
from either side at pleasure on this infallible principle. The 
insight of reason gets the adequate cause beyond experience, 
and within experience the scientific test finds the actual fact 
in perfect correspondence. In every fairly tested case, the 
rational cause and the actual effect implicate each other, and 
neither can be thought except as the duphcate complement of 
the other. The one is nothing in the absence of the other. 

With what may be gained from these two works there will 
be a preparation for applying and duly estimating the validity 
of the tests for the remaining divisions of science. We have 



AN OPEN DOOR FOR PHILOSOPHY. 2/5 

found a faculty and taken a position enabling us to overlook all 
the activities of the sense and understanding, and all their 
attained cognitions, and through them to look at what was 
assumed and has all along been kept unexplained, as a neces- 
sary condition for the very beginning of our process of knowing. 
Neither the sense nor the understanding was able to overlook 
its own processes, and could only repeat them and take the 
new experiments as convincing, on the ground of perpetual 
uniformity, making invariability of fact in experience stand as 
valid law of experience, while knowing nothing precedent to 
the fact that had been determinative of it. The common 
mind had the conviction of precedent efficient condition, but 
neither it nor its scientific teachers could give any ratification 
of this conviction. ^ An acknowledgment of the organ of 
reason gives the authority to claim this precedent adequate 
confirmation, on the ground that any man denying it convicts 
himself of self-contradiction. Ht denies what he is unavoid- 
ably obhged perpetually to re-affirm. The denial is inevitable 
self-debasement. This faculty is the organ for philosophy, and 
the field of the Rational and Theistic sciences is the field of 
philosophy, to each of vv^hose sub-divisions it is necessary to 
apply the test as the only way to the bringing of common 
experience to a complete system. 

That Philosophy which may expect to find an open process 
to the completed system of General Empirical Science begins, 
beyond the Psychical, with the Division of 

Rational Science. We only indicate the course it must 
take through the stages of the subdivisions already'classified. 

T/ie Esthetic Standard of Taste may be attained by sum- 
marily noting its successive indications. Each sense has in 
experience its agreeable and disagreeable sensations from out- 
ward affections of the organ, and guided by scientific experi- 
ment it may reach the maximum of gratification attainable by 
any one sense, or in general of all sensations ; and all such 



2/6 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

standards, particular or more general, would be artistic rules for 
guiding and ratifying so many sciences ; but as ministering only 
to sense-gratificationj even under the best appreciation and 
adoption by the understanding, they would stand in the. rank 
of useful art only. 

Of all the senses, those of sight and sound only, above their 
application to appetites or fancy in sense, or to estimates and 
imaginations in the understanding, have the capability of giving 
measured forms that appeal directly to the reason. Organic 
forms of colored light and shade, and of modulated tones, 
meet and please the eye and ear as mere sense-recipients, and 
pass on to fairly estimated judgments, but they also go further 
and stand directly in the presence of reason. Life is back of 
the organism it builds up about itself, and is quite beyond the 
reach of sense-observation or its reflection in the understanding, 
and can be brought within human cognition by the insight of 
reason alone. But in the reason, looking through the phenom- 
enal organism, the life-power. is its authoritative induction of 
that which, precedent to the organism, was the only sufficient 
reason and adequate cause that such an organism came for- 
mally into sense- observation, and then passed out of sense into 
psychical recollection. And so coming into rational cognition 
it must, of course, abide the test of reason's approbation. 

The completed life-forms, in all parts of the organism and 
in matured structure, are the elementary materials for rational 
art, and the insight of reason detects and approves such only 
as the actual life-power will permit to stand out in the art-world 
as its worthy representatives. To the reason, thus, the true 
form is back of the organism, and in the primitive life-power 
that makes and shapes and fills the organism in whole and in 
every particular member. It is no conception taken together 
after the sense, but a true Idea living and acting within the 
organism it has made. Whatever so represents life, and living 
emotion, sentiment, purpose, or characteristic disposition, be- 



AN OPEN DOOR FOR PHILOSOPHY. 2J'J 

longs to fine art, having mere life and sense-representation in 
low art, and the exhibitions of the most elevated human char- 
acteristics in high art, all standing out in pure form to the 
insight and approbation of reason. We want the manifested 
form for no sense appetite or interest, but solely for the contem- 
plation and approbation of reason. 

And now, any scientific and able work of art, either as written 
treatise, or finished model in marble, or canvas, or musical per- 
formance may be studied with profit as well as pleasure, but 
none can subserve the end of philosophy which merely or 
mainly applies the test of reason to any select model or school 
or age of art, ancient or modern ; for philosophy has its end 
not in what of beauty has been put within experience, and only 
so far as experience itself has become beautiful in its conformity 
to the rational standard of Taste. Hegel's treatment of art, 
exhibiting the fulness of his fondest interest and genius, has this 
insufficiency for philosophy, that like his whole system it can 
apply itself only to what experience has in it, and not to any 
standard of Taste which reason presents beyond it. What the 
combined spontaneities of nature and the thinking process have 
already gained it has, but it can go no further. But experience 
itself has the life of reason beneath and beyond it, and has the 
living ideal of reason working itself out as its artist, and only as 
we get that can we know its completed system. 

The Philosophic Law of Truth has also its special mode of 
testing application. In philosophy, the task of reason is to look 
over all that has been done in the sense and the understanding. 
It is to take note of the assumptions made at the starting ; vi^^., 
the assumed impression on the sense and the assumed sponta- 
neous reception by the sense, and is to keep the process all 
through carefully and exactly settled on both sides, till it shall 
clearly determine that at last the whole content of experience is 
accounted for, and also that the beginning process and closing 
have their consistent systematic unity. Nothing is to remain 



278 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

which has not found for itself a good and sufficient reason. As 
the philosophy must make the connections of experience beau- 
tiful altogether, to the satisfaction of reason as ultimate stand- 
ard, in like degree these connections must be true to the full 
satisfaction of reason. 

Nothing can be philosophically beautiful that is not moreover 
philosophically true, and looking back to the connections made 
in the logic we adopted, it is readily seen what the true is 
which it is here indicated must stand the test of reason. We 
first took the logic of permanent conceptions, and then that of 
changing conceptions, and saw that neither could be made a 
continuous process, but must reach a dead-lock somewhere, 
and we have since also shown the emptiness of their respective 
philosophies. We then took as our adopted logic that of the 
spontaneous life-process, wherein it was seen that the phenom- 
enal pull and push of gravity, levity, polarity, etc., which had 
mechanically made up the material system, could in part, at 
least, be assimilated in living organisms, vegetable and animal 
and human, in which sentient and psychical spontaneities might 
have conscious intelligence, and that thus the process of com- 
mon experience might have its open beginning and its open 
ongoing. And now that all this be true in the attestation of 
reason, it will be necessary that these material phenomenal 
mechanics be known in the insight of reason to have their 
precedent causal forces, which fairly and fully expound every 
mechanical movement of the material universe, and make of it 
one exact system ; and also that each organic being has its living 
spontaneity which, precedent to the organism, has taken the 
material forces and wrought them into its embodiment ; and 
that in this organic embodiment, sentient and psychical agen- 
cies lie back, which have been causal for conscious perception 
and psychical reflection ; and finally, that the human organism, 
with its more highly endowed rational spirituality, has had also 
its precedent adequate causality. They are all in their living 



AN OPEN DOOR FOR PHILOSOPHY, 279 

organisms actually outworking after their kinds, and they must 
rationally be accounted for, and this is the indicated necessity 
for attaining the True in philosophy. 

Such attainment of the precedent causality in the material 
universe was attempted in the Rational Cosmology, on the same 
principle as in the Rational Psychology, that the Idea in the 
Reason was ever the law in the Fact, but this has since been 
accomplished, not only for the mechanism of matter, but com- 
prehensively for living organisms and sentient and psychical 
intelligences and rational humanity, in the work, Creator and 
Creation, on the more compendious principle that the prece- 
dent Idea in the Reason makes the Fact. The First Part of 
that work, in finding the Creator, is not here applicable, but 
Part II., beginning with Space and Time, meets the demand 
here indicated, and also shows its necessity on the ground that 
the reason only can give the connections of the Universe in 
their places and periods in the one Space and one Time which 
shall be in common for human experience. It is not enough 
to make an induction of accordant facts, and then induce from 
their uniformity the facts that must in future be, for this keeps 
ever within the experience. The reason must, .through the 
peculiarity of the facts, infer the precedent adequate causality 
for the facts, and thereby transcend experience in the deter- 
mination of what must first have been in order to the experi- 
ence. Every rational human mind is constantly conscious of 
this induction of efficient causalities, and of the impossibility to 
rest satisfied in any supposition that has not its apprehended 
adequate causation. The supposed causation must itself pro- 
duce the fact, independently of all mental deductions from any 
fact. 

The Philosophic Rule of Right is, finally, another and inde- 
pendent mode of applying a vaUd attestation, and which must 
be apprehended and admitted before there can be a systematic 
unity of common experience. Empirical connections must be 



28o EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

beautiful, accordant with an ultimate standard of taste, nor can 
they so be except as also they conform to the ultimate Law of 
the True ; and now we must see moreover that they can be 
neither beautiful nor true except as they also conform to an 
ultimate Rule of Right. An endowment of Reason superin- 
duced upon the sense and understanding gives the right to 
say, that if any assumed beauty or truth violate the dignity of 
the rational spirituality, and therein degrade and debase this 
supreme excellency, such beauty is a deformity, and such truth 
is a cheat and falsehood. Above all claims whatsoever is the 
obligation upon every man that he maintain his spiritual 
integrity. 

How it is deemed practicable to exactly and universally 
apply this ultimate test to all human experience is given in 
the recent joint revision of the System of Moral Science. All 
rules of economy, utility, expediency, estimate of most happi- 
ness on the whole, which only keep within experience and 
deduce their standard from experience, must be utterly incom- 
petent to determine what experience itself ought to be. And 
yet such a determination we must have, or leave common expe- 
rience irreconcilable with reason. What reason claims must 
be found and rendered. 

And now, when every fact in common experience shall have 
been found to have its sufficient reason for its existence, and 
in this adequate causality precedent to the experience for all 
phenomenal existence, Rational Science shall have been philo- 
sophically tested and finished, the Index will yet point onward 
to a more advanced mode of attestation. All such precedent 
causality for its fact would still leave all in simple individuality, 
and the reason of each man would be conscious test only for 
his own facts, while the common experience must, in order to 
its philosophic unity, have its testing appeal to a reason that is 
in common for all. There must be found the one source of 
rational valid attestation for humanity, and this will be the final 
demand for a — 



AN OPEN DOOR FOR PHILOSOPHY. 281 

Theistic Science. While we extend this demand to all 
within its field, we need also to know how to restrict this field 
itself within its requisite limits. All common experience for 
humanity — material, vital, spontaneously sentient and psychi- 
cal, and also spiritually ethical — must have its standard of appeal 
to a common source beyond any individual appropriation, but it 
should not be required to find an appeal for anything beyond 
human experience. Our science must ultimately systematize 
the experience of all humanity, but if there be any higher or 
lower experience than that which is brought within human 
consciousness, such will not at all appertain to our philosophy. 
We stop short with the comprehension of humanity. 

The Reason which shall fulfil the ends of a testing appeal 
for the verity of all common experience must be ultimate 
authority for entire humanity, and as such it is the God of 
humanity, and the task for finding this is thrown upon the 
philosophy. That pretended philosophy which cannot reach 
to this is good for nothing as philosophy, since manifestly 
nothing short of this can give ultimate validity to any one 
lower field of science. Such a God for Humanity is the Postu- 
late of Reason, and if the philosophy cannot attain to it, it is 
worthless. 

The Logic of Reason is a work designed to exclude all 
scepticism from the whole sphere of Reason, and while for the 
present use the criticisms of various theories in the First Part 
are unimportant, the Second Part is directly applicable, and 
may be sufficiently available. 

We cannot start from nothing and ultimately attain some- 
thing. " Out of nothing, nothing emerges, as into nothing, 
not anything returns." No assumed time-successions can give 
origin to anything. But a common experience — mechanical, 
spontaneous, sentient, psychic, and spiritual — actually is, and 
reason's demand is peremptory for a sufficient causality; and 
the man who holds to the actual, and denies the adequately 



282 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

causal, forfeits all credit to his rationality, and consciously 
debases his birthright. Such sufficient Reason is itself adequate 
first cause for all within experience. 

And just here is the point to make a wise adoption on the 
right side of the two distinctions in philosophy from the early 
period of Greek speculation. Socrates habitually pushed all 
speculation back to an ultimate source that was comprehensive 
of all logical elements. Plato, his disciple,- found this in an 
Idea older than the phenomenal, and which he took as the 
paradigm of all phenomenal experience. Aristotle, Plato's 
disciple, kept himself within phenomenal experience, and made 
his ultimate a conception, which was the taking together of 
like phenomena in common after the observed uniform order 
of experience, and generalizing it to an abstraction which 
extended to all phenomena as its subordinate. The Platonic 
Idea was a sufficient reason for the production of all experience 
of which it was the paradigm ; the conception was an empty 
abstraction which might have all that it had been taken from 
again put back within it. The former was origin for experience, 
the latter an empty abstract from experience. No possible 
philosophy of the latter can compass experience in one system, 
while the philosophy of the former has failed to reach an ulti- 
mate systematization only from the incompleteness as yet of 
physical and psychical testing experiment. It admits of and 
invites to a philosophy ample for the compass- of all human 
experience. We have already attained by it an existing Reason 
sufficient for all the force and life and thought, and all the 
beauty, truth, and goodness of human experience. 

Divine Authority for hiwian history presents the necessity 
for a further and higher mode of appeal to reason for its validity. 
Our philosophy has attained, beyond contradiction, an adequate 
Author of all the facts in human experience, in a first cause 
for all causality, mechanical and spontaneous. The author of 
Nature and humanity is a rational personality, and as the Lord 



AN OPEN DOOR FOR PPIILOSOPHY. 283 

of all human personalities, must hold communion with them and 
maintain a providential and moral government over them. For 
all these ends of government there must be fully accredited 
communications from the rational sovereign to his rational sub- 
jects for regulation of secular, social, and moral intercourse 
among themselves, and the direction of their personal and 
rehgious service toward their God and Saviour. He must teach 
and educate them in many things prior to their knowledge and 
in order to their capability to make manifest their due alle- 
giance. All such revelations and disciplinary communications 
will be made from time to time as occasions demand, but com- 
prehensive and determinative of all available instruction and 
competent recognition of any relation is an authentic history of 
human experience itself, especially its beginning and termina- 
tion, which no history made within experience can ever reach. 
No matter how fully detailed and authentically tested the long- 
est and broadest historic succession of events may be, while 
their origin and termination are unknown, they must stand by 
themselves isolate and unmeaning, with no sufficient initial or 
final reason why they should have been at all. No history by 
humanity can be the history of humanity itself, and except as 
we have this history of humanity from the author of humanity, 
and of all human experience, we can have no adequate cogni- 
tion of what humanity is, what it means, or whether indeed it 
have any significancy whatever. Our history of our common 
experience must come authenticated from the Lord of humanity 
itself, or it is but a dream that can get no interpretation. 

Human experience has many histories which have sprung up 
from within ; none of these, though claiming to be universal, 
can at all Kelp us ; all religions have their deities, and experi- 
ence has its many rehgious authorities, each giving its own 
account of its vaHdity and its historic right to control its vota- 
ries. We have no choice but to go to some one already pro- 
poitnded, or propound some new authority for an outside 



284 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

history, since in the absence of it we can never systematize the 
common experience of humanity, and the one we take must be 
able to test itself thoroughly by its rationality. It is good for 
nothing in philosophy if it cannot stand the test of reason. 
Neither science, philosophy, nor religion can have any vaHdity 
till they can all stand together in the one completed and con- 
sistent system that is ratified in an ultimate reason. If we take 
the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments for our history 
of common experience, it can hardly be permitted to us to say, 
the Bible was not intended to teach us science, since a religion 
whose history of humanity does not sustain science must stand 
us poorly in stead when we come in our extremity to rest our 
faith upon it in prayer or our hope in it at death. 

But if we will take this scripture history of human experience 
and apply to it the philosophical test of reason as we have 
already determined it, we shall find its authority unquestionable, 
and its vahdity steadfast in every emergency. Minor points 
of particular chronology, interpretation, translation, manuscript 
transmission, or exact authorship may raise disputation, but the 
credit of the history as a whole will forever stand the true test 
utterly immovable. Let it be carefully noted that the history 
is that of humanity in its earthly home, only barely stating what 
before occurred and what must afterwards follow, and that the 
authoritative source from which it comes is the divine Logos, 
or Reason, who, though adequate First Cause for all worlds, is 
peculiarly the Lord of the human race as dwelling on the Earth, 
and having reference to other beings or- worlds only as bearing 
upon our common experience. 

What precedes our direct experience, and stands wholly out- 
side of human observation, but yet needs to be taken into 
account in order to a systematic comprehension of experience, 
is contained in the first and second chapters of Genesis ; and 
the testing of this account of the origin of all experience, by the 
Rational science as already indicated under the second subdi- 



AN OPEN DOOR FOR PHILOSOPHY. 285 

vision of the Philosophic Law of Truth, will infallibly establish 
its divine authority. With the philosophy of the primitive dis- 
tinguishable Forces, as given in the work, Creator and Crea- 
tion there referred to, appHed to the successive "days" or 
epochs, as the creating process advances, we cannot fail to see, 
literally, a most exact correspondence of the rationally induced 
Philosophy and the divinely authenticated History. The His- 
tory manifests itself to be designed for humanity, admitting only 
what is relative to the earth and human experience upon it, and 
is thus comprehensive for human science and religion. 

The "beginning" in our Philosophy and this divine History 
is at the selfsame point ; in the Philosophy at the creation of 
"material atoms," and in the History at the creation of "the 
heavens and the earth." The history particularizes "the earth," 
though as yet unseparated from the mass, while all was in cha- 
otic darkness, with the Spirit of God brooding over the surface. 
Light is called for and it comes, and the "ethereal atoms" of 
the Philosophy are thus present. The light is separated from 
the darkness, and in this we have the ethereal atoms of the 
Philosophy inclosed by the expanded material mass, giving a 
sphere of internal brightness environed by the dark flux of 
melted matters, the light called day, and the darkness night. 
This ends ikv^ first epoch. 

This universal sphere of light and matter opens its next era 
with its gravitating matter pressing back upon its fixed centre 
and crowding in the elastic ether, and comes to its equilibration 
throughout with a firm periphery dividing the consistent fluids 
beneath from the volatile gases above. There is thus made a 
"firmament" which is called "Heaven." In every system and 
world subsequently evolved, there will be to each its respective 
firmament, the centre of the world resting back upon the uni- 
versal centre, and holding out its matter to its periphery of 
condensation, and dividing this from its vaporized matters 
beyond. To the human eye the phenomenal heavens will be 



286 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. * 

the blue arch where the clouds float and in which the stars 
shine. This ends the seco7id epoch. 

The next era begins with the earth already evolved and mov- 
ing independently. The solar system has been detached from 
the universal matter, and has thrown off its outer planets and 
planetoids, and the history notices this theatre for common 
experience alone. It cannot be that it was intended as a com- 
plete account of the creation going on in other worlds, but it 
must mean that these scriptures are designed as the Bible for 
humanity and meant to teach man in science and piety. Phil- 
osophic Geology manifestly tests its instruction. The earth's 
crust is upheaved into mountains, the waters are gathered into 
seas, and the dry land appears. The second chapter says, that 
*'the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and 
there was not a man to till the ground, but there went up a mist 
from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground." The 
inferior planets have, perhaps, not yet parted from the solar 
mass arctund which the Earth had its orbit. In this state of 
inner and ' outer heat and abundant moisture, plant-life was 
introduced, and the vegetable kingdom with its varied species 
widely flourished. From this primitive vegetation the Earth 
probably has gotten its vegetable oils and coal-measures ; and 
in this unconscious life ends the third epoch. 

The next era begins by giving the earth its moon, and then, 
with the inferior planets evolved, the sun is finished, and meas- 
ures times and seasons. And thus ends the fowth epoch. 

In the fifth epoch the waters were filled with living creatures, 
and the air had its flying fowl; followed by the sixth epoch, 
when, added to vegetable Hfe, the land had its superinduced 
Animal Kingdom with its many species, crowned at last by the 
long foretokened Man, made in the likeness of the creating 
Logos, and, by the reduplication of his own flesh and bone, 
made also male and female, becoming in the marriage bond a 
unity inseparable only with death. The final blessing was in his 



AN OPEN DOOR FOR PHILOSOPHY. 28/ 

conferred right of dominion as lord of all below, under his 
Maker, and with the injunction to replenish the earth and sub- 
due it. Here the Creator rested from his work, and the seventh 
epoch or the Sabbath commenced. The newly created and 
married pair were put in the paradise of Eden "to dress it and 
to keep it." 

With this introduction, divinely given and philosophically 
authenticated, the sacred History of human experience begins 
and follows down the ages to the consummation of its develop- 
ment in the final judgment. We refer here to the version as it 
has been found and given in the work Humanity Immortal, 
where it has been endeavored to test the "last things" of the 
human history as accurately and completely as in the Creator 
and Creation has been attempted for "the first things." Any 
assumed divine history of humanity must abide the philosophic 
test of ultimate appeal to reason if it is to help either science or 
religion. 

Philosophy has still one more testing process to which it 
must be subjected before it can authoritatively be announced 
that it has spanned all human experience and completely 
brought it into systematic unity. The agency by which this is 
to be effected is given in the attested History we have now 
adopted. This agent must be competent to create the stage 
and the actors for its exhibition ; must rule the whole perfor- 
mance ; must open a way of reconciliation for offenders ; must 
apply the appropriate inducements to final successful consum- 
mation, and then justify the whole superintendence and ultimate 
attainment. Only thus can human experience get its final 
Theistic consummation and universal approbation. Can the 
agency which may accomplish this become in any way subject 
to human recognition? It is in reference to this final inquiry, 
that we have now the philosophic Index directing us to this 
stopping-point, — the tri-personality of God's activity. The 
Doctrine of the Divine Trinity has been very generally appre- 



288 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

hended as an insoluble mystery, and if it be thus, it must be a 
delusion to propose it as in any way connected with scientific 
ratification : yet, surely, in the divine history, the truth of a 
divine trinity is not infrequently alleged as the mode of 
accounting for much of the divine agency ; and we may there- 
fore reasonably look, though reverently, for the discernment of 
this mystery by the reason's eye. To suppose God's agency to 
be like the human, having sense first, and then reflection upon 
and deduction from sense, would be absurdity, since, as author 
of sense and reflection, he must first know them in order to 
their production. To know by an inference from an event 
what was a previous suflicient reason for it, is not absurd in 
man, for his insight of reason gives to him such capability ; yet 
this is inadequate to the divine knowledge, since God must 
know suflicient reasons for events in himself, without looking 
through the events to the reasons. This last mode of knowing 
may be a secret for man, and in this way a mystery ; and yet 
the secret may be made quite explicable to man, by a rational 
use of the truth of a divine tri-personality, and, thus explained, 
the mystery becomes an illumination of all the first and last 
things in the history which were outside of the experience. 
Only this last test is yet to be applied. 

And now, when our philosophy has tested and gained for us 
the Reason which, as divine Logos, has made all things, and 
has ratified the history which reveals his creating agency, and 
his special rule over humanity, and, as ^^ Agnus Dei" has 
brought in redemption and finished and delivered to the Father 
the Mediatorial kingdom, we come to this test of tri-personahty 
as the last work of Christian philosophy. 

Our own finite reason has intrinsically its trinity, and con- 
sciously to our own apprehension gives to us each a three-fold 
self in one. Every man has in his one consciousness an imper- 
ative self which for its own sake claims and holds perpetual 
authority in its own right, and he so keeps this that no other 



AN OPEN DOOR FOR PHILOSOPHY. 289 

faculty can dethrone it ; and then he has an executive self that 
expresses and utters in act what the imperative self demanded 
and for which no other self can stand responsible ; and then, 
thirdly, a judicial self that approves or condemns with a fixed 
decision beyond all interference by any other self. And yet 
this legislative, executive, and judicial selfhood stands in one 
consciousness and all work to one end. It might or might not 
have been, that this human experience should of itself have 
suggested the Trinity of the Absolute Reason, but when the 
divine history reveals and uses it, this finite reason in the image 
of the absolute both expounds and confirms it. 

We cannot present to our own apprehension a creating or a 
redeeming Logos who must not have had, in the beginning of 
his work, a primitive Ideal paradigm purposely and imperatively 
put before him, which he also purposely and exactly brought 
out into express manifestation, in all particulars, and which was 
again purposely and consistently put together like the pattern. 
These three purposes, to insist on the ideal plan, to put out in 
full expression all its particulars, and then to connect these 
particulars after the ideal, whether in creation, redemption, or 
other work bearing upon human experience, are so separate 
aiid independent that they readily if not necessarily will be 
taken as three wills joining in associate labor for a common 
interest. Whether in exertion at the same or at different 
periods, either one might consistently say of itself and the 
others, " I am, thou art, he is " ; and of their distinct employ- 
ments, " this belongs to me, and that to thee." 

The keeper and enforcer of the working plan acts wholly in 
secret, and has no change, but has perpetual prime authority ; 
the utterer or exhibitor of every part in phenomenal manifes- 
tation is begotten of the former, and wills according to the 
Father's will; the conjoiner of the exposed parts in the one 
plan springs from both the Father and the Son, and executes 
exactly the intentions of both. Each is thus a proper person- 



290 EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

ality, and yet neither has an isolate individuality, since, as they 
all work in one light which illumines only one and the same 
plan, one and the same field of consciousness in the reason 
belongs to all. Literally the three persons as wills are one 
individual as conscious reason, such tripersonal being, though a 
contradiction in either the observing sense or the reflective 
understanding, is an intrinsic consistency and an extrinsic 
necessity to the comprehending reason. The first and last 
truths of human experience can be put into its history and the 
whole be combined in completed system tlirough no other 
agency than that of a Deity before and beyond the experience, 
and yet interfering in experience at his pleasure ; and such 
absolute Deity can be cognizable by no other human faculty 
than the reason with which man has been endowed by his 
Maker. Nor can the finite human reason recognize God's 
agency in creation and redemption otherwise than through his 
tripersonality. So far as human experience has yet gone, both 
its science and religion may receive and can sustain the test 
of reason, and for that which yet remains in the future, and is 
now but unfulfilled prophecy, the test of reason must be as full 
as for all that has gone by. 

The Bible history is for common experience, and its authority 
is restricted within the reign and kingdom of redemption, which, 
on delivery to the Father, still has left out many sharers in the 
common experience who did not become sharers in redemptive 
salvation. The last word of this redemptive authority is exactly 
the perpetual voice of reason which declares that the final state 
is that of retributive moral estimation, and that this is hence- 
forth, both by God and his rational creatures good and bad, 
to be held in exact accordance with moral character. Every 
being will himself know as he is known, and the shame and 
contempt of the guilty, and the approbation and respect of the 
righteous, will in each and all others be as the truth is. While 
then the good in being and doing good may be expected to 



AN OPEN DOOR FOR PHILOSOPHY. 29I 

become more good and worthy, all encouragement of better 
changes for the bad must stand in the probabilities of recovered 
moral character. If devils and bad men become good angels 
and good men, God and all the good must rejoice, and even 
all the bad must approve, but the hope for such change must 
rest on the expectation that the progress of retributive estima- 
tion is about to do more and better for the bad, and prove a 
more effectual means of improvement, than has been gained 
by all the patience and loving kindness of probation. Why, 
then, we are forced to ask, has mercy ever rejoiced against 
justice and judgment? We may, yea we must, let the ongoing 
experience of man, as of all other rational beings, be left just as 
the delivering up of the mediatorial kingdom to the Father 
leaves it ; viz., to the test of reason ; and we stand in the full 
conviction that in this end " that God may be all in all " is the 
systematic comsummation both of revelation and of all science. 

All that the interposition of Gospel mediation has gained has 
been gathered in and retained, and the Absolute Reason in the 
triune Godhead reigns still supreme, though as yet unheralded 
in any authentic record. Such at least is the consummation of 
Christian spiritual philosophy, whose facts and history have had 
their large place and long period in common experience, and 
while this must, till the predicted consummation come, make 
its reasonableness its ultimate test, yet may it fearlessly stand in 
competition with any and all other philosophies and religions, 
which, having been in human experience, must encounter the 
same rigid and candid test of reason. All philosophic attempts 
to comprehend experience in full system must make their ulti- 
mate appeal to reason, and the rational one only can be the 
universal science, while all others must stand self-rejected in 
their ultimate unreason. 

The Philosophy which completely systematizes human expe- 
rience fitly ends with an ascription of worship ; and unto the 
Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, of whom, and 
through whom, and to whom are all things, be glory for ever ! 



Ready for Delivery. 



HUDSON'S HARVARD SHAKESPEARE, 

GINN, HEATH, & CO., Publishers. 

Boston, New York, and Chicago. 

Thg Latest and Best Edition of SHAKESPEAEE'S COMPLETE 
"WOEES published in this Country, 



** The books are models of typography and of tasteful bind- 
ing, and booksellers will do their patrons and themselves a 
good service by making known the sterling character of this 
work." — The Publisher'' s Weekly. 

See description of the edition on the tenth page of this Circtdar. 
RETAIL PRICES. 



20-voI. edition, cloth (old gold) . $25.00 

half-morocco (green) . . 55.00 

half-calf 55-00 

tree calf . ... go. 00 



lo-vol. edition, cloth (old gold) . $20.00 

half-morocco (green) . . 40.00 

half-calf 40.00 

tree calf . , . . . 60.00 



Extra discounts given to those ordering five or ten sets. 



HUDSON'S LIFE, ART, AND CHARACTERS OF 
SHAKESPEARE 

(in 2 vols.) is uniform with the above, and will be included in the 
set at an extra cost of $4 per set, in cloth. 

PER SET. 

Two volumes, cloth, to match the Harvard in cloth $4.00 

half-calf " " " " " half-calf 8.00 

half-morocco " " " " " half-morocco .... 8.00 

tree calf " " " " " tree calf 12.00 



We have also just completed the 

EXPURGATED FAMILY SHAKESPEARE, 

Edited by Mr. Hudson. It contains the following plays, each 
bound in a volume by itself, in cloth : — 

Midsummer-Niglit's Dream. Henry Y. 

Merchant of Venice. Henry Vin. 

Mnch Ado About Nothing. Romeo and Juliet. 

As Ton Like It. Julius Caesar. 

Twelfih Night. Hamlet. 

The Tempest. King Lear. 

Winter's Tale. Macbeth. 

King John. Antony and Cleopati'a. 

Richard II. Othello. 

Richard III. Cymbeline. 

Heni-y IT., Pai-t I. Coriolanus. 

Henry lY., Part n. 

RETAIL PRICE PER SET. (in box), $16.00. 

This edition has Explanatory Notes at the bottom of the page, 
and Critical Notes at the end of the volume. 

Each Play contains, on an average, 2^ pages of introductory mat- 
ter, giving a history of the Play, the source of the plot, historical 
antecedents, the political situation, a critical estimate of the charac- 
ters, and general characteristics. 

The Plays, in all cases, are given entire, save the bare omission 
of such lines and expressions as the Editor has always deemed it 
necessary to omit in class. The omissions, he believes, do not in 
any case reach so far as to impair in the least either the delineation 
of character or the dramatic action. On the other hand, he has not 
meant to retain any matter not fairly pronounceable in any family. 

We trust that this cleanly expurgated edition of Shakespeare 
may give pleasure and profit to hundreds of family circles where now 
he is almost unknown. 



Buyers should be careful in ordering not to confound the 
HARVARD SHAKESPEARE with an OLD EDITION made 
in 185 1. (See extract below from Boston Herald.') 

Please Notice: that the HARVARD SHAKESPEARE is 

put up only in 10 and 20-volume editions, while the above-men- 
tioned OLD EDITION is put up in 6 and 12 volumes. 

We copy the following from an article in the Boston Sunday 
Herald oi Oct. 3, 1880, having reference to the old and late editions 
mentioned above : — 

" It was in 185 1 that his (Hudson's) first edition of ' Shakespeare's 
Plays' appeared in 11 volumes, after the form and style of the Chis- 
wick edition of 1 826. It was the first time that, properly speaking, the 
Poet's text had been edited in this country. The edition, so far as 
the text went, was extemporised. Its chief value was in its notes 
and introductions. When Mr. Richard Grant White's edition 
appeared in 1865, to use Mr. Hudson's own words, he 'beat me all 
to pieces.' 'Now,' he adds, referring to the Harvard edition of 
Shakespeare, just from the press of Ginn & Heath, ' I can beat him 
as much as he then beat me.' 

" In 1870 Ginn & Heath became his publishers, and brought out 
his ' School Shakespeare ' in three volumes, containing seven plays 
each. In 1872 he put into two volumes the substance of his earlier 
volumes on ' Shakespeare's Characters,' revising, condensing, rewrit- 
ing his earlier work, parts of which he had outgrown, and presenting 
his final opinions under the title of ' Shakespeare's Life, Art, 
AND Characters.' 

" It was felt by his publishers and friends, quite as much as by 
himself, that he ought to bring his fine Shakespearian scholarship to 
a final test in his mature age, and produce an edition which should 
embody his best and ripest conclusions. As far back as 1873 this 
great undertaking was in hand ; it has been pursued in season and 
out of season ever since. This is the edition by which Mr. Hudson 
is to be known in the coming time. It is dedicated to the memory 
of Daniel Webster, and the volumes, containing only two plays each, 
are models of what a book of this sort should be. It is altogether 
almost a faultless book of its kind ; and, with Mr. Hudson's growing 
fame as ' Shakespeare's scholar,' it is destined to be for many years 
the library edition which will, perhaps, be most sought for. In sim- 
plicity, in neatness, in scholarly character, THE HARVARD 
SHAKESPEARE leaves nothing to be desired." 

Mr. Hudson himself says : — 

" W^ithin the last thirty years (the time since the publication of his 
first edition) great advances and additions have been made in the 
way of preparation for such a work; and this Harvard Edition 
brings, or aims to bring, the whole matter, of Shakespeare up abreast 
with the latest researches." 



Those interested in Shakespeare should send us a postal asking 
for the pamphlet containing an interesting extract from the Preface 
to this new edition. 

It gives satisfactory reasons why a new popular edition of Shake- 
speare is needed, and shows how this need has been met in THE 
HARVARD EDITION. 

It explains clearly the proper office of Poetry, shows how it 
should be read, and how Shakespeare is to be made attractive and 
instructive. 

The same pamphlet also contains an Extract from an article in the 
Boston Sunday Herald of Oct. 3, 1880, giving *' An Outline History 
of the American Carlyle. — Personal Sketch of Mr. Hudson in his 
Library y and the Growth of his Shakespeariaii Studies ^ 



The follo'wi7ig co7nments on Mr. Hudson'' s Works are good evidence 
that he stands first amo7tg American Shakespearian Editors, and 
is considered very high authority both in Ejtglajtd and Germany. 



Horace Howard Furness, 

Phila. : Will you kindly send a copy, 
as far as issued, of the " Harvard Shake- 
speare," to the care of Samuel Timmins, 
Esq., Birmiirgham, England, for the 
" Shakespeare Memorial Library," and 
add the remaining volumes as they 
successively appear. Also, please send 
a copy to the care of Dr. Reinhold 
Kohler, Weimar, Germany, for " the Li- 
brary of the German Shakespeare Soci- 
ety," adding the remaining volumes. 
Please send the bill, including trans- 
portation, etc., to me, and it will give 
me great pleasure to remit to you at 
once, I scarcely know how I can bet- 
ter show my high appreciation of this 
noble edition, with its happy mingle 
of illustration, explanation, and keen, 
subtle, sympathetic criticism, than by 
placing it where English and German 
scholars can have free access to it, and 
learn from it the wealth of love and 
learning which in this country' is dedi- 
cated to Shakespeare. 



Joseph Crosby, Zanesville, O.: 
The completion of your beautiful " Har- 
vard Shakespeare " gives me a fitting 
opportunity to congratulate you on 
its production. Having carefully read 
every word as it came from the press, 
I have earned the right to say that it is 
a noble and admirable edition in every 
respect, and could I have but one Shake- 
speare, whether to take up for an hour's 
enjoyment or for the purpose of close 
and critical study, I would at once select 
the " Harvard.-' Dividing the com- 
mentary, and placing at the foot of the 
{••age such notes as elucidate linguistic 
difficulties or obsolete allusions, and 
throwing the textual criticisms into a 
body at the end of the play, is an ex- 
cellent scheme. And while in the former 
there is no "shirking," the text being 
made " plain as way to parish church," 
so far as the researches of the best 
scholarship allow, they are as free from 
pedantry as from dulness. Mr. Hud- 
son's style is unique in its piquancy and 



its vigor ; and he keeps his readers on 
the gut Vive from first to last. And so 
in the " Critical Notes," every change 
from the old copies is remarked, and 
the reasons for the text selected are set 
forth without dogmatism or any of that 
abuse of fellow-commentators that dis- 
figures our old Shakespeares. With 
the " Harvard " edition, and the editor's 
"Life, Art, and Characters of Shake- 
speare," any reader will find himself 
thoroughly equipped for the intelligent 
study, textual and aesthetic, of the great 
dramatist. These books contain the 
results of a long life's sympathetic de- 
votion to Shakespeare ; they are an im- 
perishable monument to Mr. Hudson, 
a credit to your house, and an honor to 
America to have produced them ; and 
I sincerely hope they will find, as they 
richly merit, an appreciative and world- 
wide circulation. 

Mr. F. J. FurnivaU's Introduc- 
tion to " The Leopold Shakespeare" : In 
Shakespearian criticism, Gervinus of 
Heidelberg, Dowden of Dublin, and 
Hudson of Boston, are the student's 
best guides that we have in English 
speech. 

Prof. Dowden, Dublin : Hudson's 
edition takes its place beside the best 
work of English Shakespeare students. 

London AthensBum : Mr. Hud- 
son's volumes deserve to find a place 
in every library devoted to Shake- 
speare, to editions of his works, to his 
biography, and to the works of com- 
mentators. 

Mr. H. H. Furness: I cannot 
refrain from recording my thorough 
admiration for Mr. Hudson's aesthetic 
criticisms. No Shakespeare student 
can afford to overlook them. 

New York Tribune : As an in- 
terpreter of Shakespeare, imbued with 
the vital essence of the great English 



dramatist, and equally qualified by in- 
sight and study to penetrate the deepest 
significance of his writings, it would be 
difficult to name an English or Ameri- 
can scholar who can be compared with 
the editor of this edition. Not even 
Mr. Coleridge, or the late R. H. Dana, 
the great masters in Shakespearian 
criticism, and to whom Mr. Hudson 
would not disown discipleship, have 
evinced a more subtle comprehension 
of the finer sense of the many-sided 
bard, or have given a more vigorous 
and pregnant utterance to their con- 
ceptions of his meaning. His com- 
mentary is a study of profound and 
delicate thought. Every sentence is 
richly freighted with ideas, which afford 
the seeds of precious intellectual ac- 
quisitions, and the suggestions of noble 
methods in the conduct of life. 

Hon. George S. Hillard : When 
any one differs from Mr. Hudson's con- 
clusions, it behooves him to examine 
well the grounds of his dissent. Mr. 
Hudson is an independent and original 
thinker, and no mere transmuter of 
another man's metal. His tone of mind 
is philosophical. We cannot read any- 
where a dozen pages of these volumes 
without admitting that we are convers- 
ing with a thinker, and not merely a 
scholar. We recognize everywhere a 
peculiar and characteristic flavor. Mr. 
Hudson's views, be they deemed right 
or wrong, sound or unsound, are un- 
borrowed. They are coined in his own 
mint, and bear his image and super- 
scription. 

Mr. Joseph Crosby, Zanesville, 
O. : The explanatory notes are, where 
of course they ought always to be, at 
the foot of the page ; they give what 
the editor understands to be the correct 
explanations at once ; and do not puzzle 
readers with a lot of variorum explana- 
tions, and leave them, unaided, to select 
for themselves which are the true ones. 
And I like his style too. It is fresh, 



original, and pungent. He is deter- 
mined that none of his readers shall go 
to sleep over his notes and monographs. 

Mr. E. P. Whipple : Gervinus, the 
greatest Shakespearian critic of Ger- 
many, has recognized Hudson as a man 
whose opinions are to be admitted or 
controverted, as he admits or contro- 
verts the judgments of Schlegel and 
Ulrici, of Johnson, Coleridge, Lamb, 
and Hazlitt. His is the most thoughtful 
and intelligent interpretative criticism 
which has, during the present century, 
been written, either in English or Ger- 
man. Hudson on " Shakespeare " is an 
authority, just as Agassiz is an authority 
in zoology. Mr. Hudson has none of 
the pedantry of many students of Shake- 
spearian lore, while he is brimful of its 
substance and spirit. He writes boldly 
and independently, but he is not self- 
opinionated. He is reverential as well 
as intrepid. He is never dull ; but he 
does not escape dulness through pert- 
ness or shallowness. His great object 
is to educate people into a solid knowl- 
edge of Shakespeare as well as to 
quicken their love for him ; and in this 
educational purpose he aims to delight 
the readers he instructs. It is in the 
analysis of Shakespeare's characters 
that Mr. Hudson puts forth all his force 
and subtlety of thought. They have 
been so long his mental companions, 
acquaintances, or friends, that he almost 
forgets the fact that they are not actual 
beings, however much they may be 
"real" beings. He shows that Shake- 
speare's characters have so taken real 
existence in his mind, that lie uncon- 
sciously speaks of them as one speaks 
of persons he daily meets. This is the 
charm of his criticisms. Even when his 
analysis breaks up the characters into 
their elements, and shows that they are 
not so much individual specimens of 
human nature as vividly individualized 
classes of human nature, he still never 
loses sight of their personality. His an- 
alysis of the great characters of Shake- 



speare, whether serious or comic, is so 
keen and true, that it cannot but give 
new and fresh ideas to the most diligent 
student of the Poet. In his expositions 
of the female characters of Shakespeare 
he is uniformly excellent. I'he ideal 
beauty of these types of womanhood 
has never had a more genial and deli- 
cate interpreter. The minor characters 
also have full justice done them. 

The Cong-re nationalist : His 
scholarly ability and experience as a 
student of Shakespeare place any such 
work from his pen in the front rank. 
.Whatever reading or comment has the 
weight of his authority behind it, has 
therein a strong presumption in its favor. 

F. J. Child, Prof, of Evg. Lit., 
Harvard College: A best edition of 
Shakespeare I have always been at a 
loss to recommend. As yet I have not 
gone very far into this new work of Mr. 
Hudson's, but my first impression is 
that this may safely be called the very 
best edition. {^May 24, 1881.) 

Cyrus Northrop, Prof, of Eng. 
Lit., Yale College : Prof. Hudson has 
done much to make the study of Shake- 
speare attractive ; and I cannot better 
show my appreciation of his good sense, 
his correct judgment, and his skilful 
analysis of character, as well as of his 
learning, than by saying that his is one 
of the editions required in my classes. 
{^Oct.ig,j88i:) 

Dr. A. P. Peabody, Harvard 
Coll. : As I have already said, in print 
and in private speech, I regard the 
edition as unequalled in Shakespearian 
scholarship, and in its worth in the 
library and for current use ; and I yield 
to no one in the highest regard for the 
editor. (May 2j, 18S1.) 

Boston Advertiser : Taking all 
things into account, the liistorical in- 
troductions, the marginal and critical 



notes, the convenient size of the vol- 
umes, and the careful and accurate 
typography, we know of no edition of 
Shakespeare so satisfactory for constant 
use. The " Harvard " edition deserves 
to become the standard edition for ad- 
mirers and students of Shakespeare in 
this corner of the world. 

Spring-field Republican : Char- 
acterized by loving enthusiasm, ripe 
scholarship, terse and comprehensive 
explanations of obscure passages and 
dubious words, and able historical and 
critical comment. The introductions 
to the various plays are indeed valuable 
helps to the student, full of the informa- 
tion which years of special instruction 
have taught the editor to be most suited 
to the needs of the student and general 
reader, without taking from him the de- 
sire to search further for himself, and of 
the critical acumen which has marked 
him as first among America's Shake- 
spearian scholars. 

Zion's Herald, Boston : In purity 
of text and inintelHgent annotation this 
edition has no superior. 

Tbe Churcliman, N. Y. : It is his 
merit to give the results of scholarship 
and learning rather than the processes 
by which they are reached, and, as a 
consequence, he does not overload his 
text ; nor does he waste time in explain- 
ing what is already obvious and clear, 
— he holds no farthing candle to the 
sun. Unlike many editors, he brings 
his author and not himself to the front, 
and is himself silent where the great 
high priest of nature speaks. The great 
dramatist was the master of all learning, 
" a poet soaring in the high reason of 
his fancies, with his garland and sing- 
ing robes about him," and when the sun 
is full high advanced in the heavens, 
before him all lesser lights must pale. 
It is in this reverent spirit that Mr. 
Hudson does his work. The notes of 
Mr. Hudson enable us to discover new 



beauties, and this edition of Shake- 
speare, with its clear type, handsome 
paper, and modest binding, commends 
itself to us by a thousand charms. 

Washing-ton Post: The "Har- 
vard Shakespeare" is destined to be- 
come the standard popular edition of 
the great dramatic poet. There is no 
better Shakespearian scholar in the 
country than Prof. Hudson, and upon 
this work he has exhausted the re- 
searches of a lifetime. In beauty of 
letterpress, legibility of type, conven- 
ience of arrangement, and copiousness 
of notes, there is no Shakespeare to 
compare with it. 

Christian Register, Boston : We 
are not alone in approving this edition, 
for our praise of Mr. Hudson's work 
has been more moderate than that of 
many of the critics. The man who 
reads for enjoyment, desirous of gain- 
ing also a fair knowledge of the mean- 
ing of Shakespeare, need not find him- 
self ignorant after giving attention to 
what the author has to say in illustration 
of the text. In every way the edition 
is a credit to editor and publishers, and 
may well stand as the monument of a 
lifetime of loving devotion to the great- 
est of English poets. There is enough 
for the general reader, and not too 
much. Every reasonable question is 
answered, and few but special students 
will care to go deeper into the critical 
questions which are raised at every 
step. 

Tiie Common wealth, Boston: 
Careful research, critical analysis, intel- 
ligent comment, judicious notes, and 
admirable text. A Hfetime of thought 
and investigation is embraced in the 
preparation of the critical matter, and 
the suggestions are worthy of respect 
from all readers of the great bard. 

New Elng-land Joiirnal of Edu- 
cation, Boston : Whoever is fortunaf* 



enough to possess the " Harvard Edi- 
tion" has, in the best possible form, an 
edition of Shakespeare of which he 
may, as an American, be proud. The 
publishers have won for themselves not 
only the credit of being moved with a 
most commendable spirit of enterprise 
in advancing American literary scholar- 
ship, but have proved that they are un- 
excelled as book-makers. The Messrs. 
Ginn, Heath, & Co. have their own 
printing-office, and their typography 
and binding is in the best style of the 
art. 

The School Bulletm, New Yor^ : 
Should receive attention from all who 
want the best. 

Editor of The V7estem, Si. 
Louis : There is no edition so con- 
venient and satisfactory for a priva.te 
library. 

Boston Letter to Spring-fleld 
Union, Oct, 24, iSSi : As a whole, 
this is unquestionably entitled to rank 
among the foremost of all the excellent 
editions of Shakespeare yet published. 
Mr. Hudson has brought to the editing 
of it, in addition to his general scholar- 
ship and good judgment, an almost un- 
equalled familiarity with Shakespeare, 
derived from the special and exhaustive 
study of his works, his life, his time, and 
his students, for many years. There is 
nothing extemporaneous in his work; 
it is well considered, carefully weighed, 
and stated as conscientiously as if he 
were jmder oath to tell the truth, the 



whole truth, and notliing but the truth 
concerning Shakespeare and I) is mar- 
vellous writings. The editions he has 
previously produced, both in separate 
plays and entire, have been rehearsals 
for this the crowning achievement of his 
life study. The " Life of Shakespeare " 
has been entirely re-written, as well as 
the introductions to the plays, so as to 
incorporate the latest researches. 

New York Evening' Express : 
Prof. Hudson ranks among the first 
Shakespearian scholars. He has de- 
voted his life to Shakespearian studies, 
and to the literature best calculated to 
explain and illustrate the meaning of 
Shakespeare's marvellous verse. He 
is endowed with critical faculties of a 
high order, sharpened by continuous 
culture, but balanced by an apprecia- 
tiveness and a large common sense 
which keep him from falling a victim 
to his critical fancies and divinings. 
He keeps a firm foot on facts, on the 
solid ground of knowledge, on the es- 
tablished canons of taste and judg- 
ment, and is always trustworthy, which 
is vastly more than can be said of most 
modern Shakespeare editors and an- 
notators. And these qualities among 
others — we cannot help mendoning 
the tasteful form and tj^iography of the 
volumes — render his edition superior 
to any we have, not excepting that of 
the infallible and immaculate Richard 
Grant White. It is a credit to Ameri- 
can scholarship, and admirably suited 
for educated Shakespearian readers 
and students. 



MISCELLANE O US. 



i6i 



IISOELMSOTJS. 



Hickok's Moral Science. 

By Laurens P. Hickok, D.D., LL.D. Revised with the cooperation 
of Julius H. Seelye, D.D., LL.D., President of Amherst College. 
i2mo. Cloth. 288 pages. Mailing Price, ^1.30 ; Introduction, ^1.12; 
Exchange, 60 cts. 

This work is an entire and careful revision of Hickok's original 
text-book of Moral Science. The remarkable excellencies of that 
book, unsurpassed as it is in systematic rigor and scientific precision, 
are carefully retained in the present edition. Many parts of the 
book have, however, been rewritten entirely, modifying the original 
statements where this was necessary for clearness, and adding new 
discussions where this was necessary for fulness. To the many 
teachers who have used the original text-book with such signal 
profit, the publishers confidently commend this new and revised 
edition ; and with equal confidence they offer it to others who would 
like a manual in which the principles of morality are expounded in 
a manner as truly simple as it is thoroughly scientific. 



A. P. Peabody, Prof, of Chris- 
tian Morals, Harvard Coll. : Permit 
me to express my very high appre- 
ciation of the value of the work. I 
read it when it first appeared with the 
greatest interest and satisfaction, and 
in its present form it possesses whatever 
added claims the most skilful and care- 
ful editorship can give. Had it ap- 
peared a month earlier, should more 
probably than not have adopted it. 

G. P. Fisher, Prof of Church 
History, Yale Coll. : I have long 
wanted to see just such a book, — one 
in which practical ethics should be 
clearly, and systematically, and philo- 



sophically presented. I am very much 
pleased with the chapters relating to 
duties, and not less so with the more 
theoretical portion of the work. The 
style is so perspicuous, and at the same 
time so concise, that the, work is emi- 
nently adapted to serve as a text-book 
in colleges and higher schools. In 
matter and manner, it is a capital book, 
and I wish it God speed. 

C. B. Hulbert, Pres. Middlebury 
Coll., VI., and Prof of Moral Science : 
In its present form it is the best of 
recently issued text-books on Moral 
Science. 



l62 



GINN, HE A TH, &' CO:S PUBLIC A TIONS. 



A. A. E. Taylor, Pres. of Univ. 
of Wooster, Ohio, and Prof of Biblical 
Instruction : It is a capital text-book 
for the class-room, fully abreast of the 
ethical controversies of the day. 

J. W. Andrews, Pres. Marietta 
Coll., O., and Prof, of Intellectual Phi- 
losophy : I class myself among " the 
teachers who have used the original 
text-book with signal profit." I have 
looked over the new work with great 
satisfaction. It is sound, strong, and 
clear. I doubt whether any work on 
Moral Science surpasses this in the 
depth and permanence of the impres- 
sion made upon the student. It re- 
quires study, of course, but it will repay 
the student, whether teacher or pupil. 
The part relating to duties to the State 
is adrnirable for its fulness and preci- 
sion. 

The N. E. Journal of Educa- 
tion : Taken altogether it is an ad- 
mirable text-book, and we can cor- 
dially recommend it for use wherever 
pupils are old enough to consider 
morality in a scientific way, or to dis- 
cuss intelligently the fundamental prin- 
ciples of civil government. No subjects 
arc more vitally necessary in public 
education, and this volume presents 



them in a clear, compact, and forcible 
manner. 

New York Tribune : President 
Hickok has devoted a prolonged life 
to the illustration of the supremacy of 
reason, as the foundation of morals and 
the fight of speculative philosophy; 
and in this work he has presented the 
most compact, and, perhaps, the most 
luminous exposition of his profound 
theories, and their influence on the 
development of thought, and the insti- 
tutions of society; a large portion of 
the volume is devoted to the practical 
details of conduct, in the manifold 
development of social and civil life. In 
this respect it is not surpassed by any 
popular manual of ethics. The theory 
of the work no doubt bears a certain 
analogy to the " categorical impera- 
tive" of Immanuel Kant, between 
whom and the author there is a visible 
resemblance in intellectual character 
and tendencies of thought. But still 
the stamp of originality- is impressed 
on the leading features of Dr. Hickok's 
analysis, and the present work, with 
those by which it is accompanied, mark 
a new departure in American philo- 
sophical speculation, and entitle him 
to an eminent rank among its repre- 
sentative minds and its practical guides 
and authorities. 



Harvard Examination Papers. 

Collected and arranged by R. F. Leighton, Principal of Brooklyn, 
N.Y., High School. Fourth Edition, containing papers of June and 
September, 1877. i2mo. Cloth. 412 pages. Mailing Price, ^1.70; 
Introduction, ^1.50. 

These are all the questions (except on the subject of Geometry), 
in the form of papers, which have been used in the examinations for 
admission to Harvard College since i860. They furnish an excellent 
series of Questions in Modern, Physical, and Ancient Geography ; 
Grecian and Roman History ; Arithmetic and Algebra ; Plane and 



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